Strange Lullaby
by Kiana Caelum
Summary: Complete. The necklace marked the end of his search. For a hundred years, he had sought it and the woman who owned it, keeping an old vow. A chance meeting with a stranger marked the end of Marina's innocence, and her first glimpse of the the Nightworld.
1. Prologue

Evening all...

This is a short four-part Nightworld story set in Britain. I had tremendous fun writing it - and I hope you enjoy reading it. Feedback is welcomed, be it good, bad, or ugly.

** Disclaimer:** All characters and/or clannames you recognise are the property of the wonderful LJS; all else was whipped up by me. I offer no guarantees as to the sanity of the characters, or indeed, myself. And as the Jackson Five taught us, all blame lies with the boogie. And me. But mostly the boogie.

**Rating:** 15-R

**Spoilers:** NW in general. Lyrics belong to Robbie Williams and come from 'The Road to Mandalay'.

Much love,  
Ki

**Strange Lullaby - Prologue**

___Look down the barrel of a gun and feel the moon replace the sun  
Everything we've ever stolen has been lost, returned or broken,  
No more dragons left to slay_**  
**

We spend our lives listening to heartbeats.

Listening to the world beating, listening to the hearts of others in their voices, listening to the murmurs of our own heart. Waiting for the words to be spoken that will awaken us, waiting like a child for a long-forgotten song to be played again, the notes at first so alien and unfamiliar until our heart catches at what it thought it had lost and dances to the rhythms of its own sacred tune. Holding on for that moment when we can sing the music back to the sky.

Clutching onto all we hear, our heartbeat clinging in our every action.

Waiting until we hear some strange lullaby that is strange no more.

X - X - X - X - X

Clutching...

Clinging...

Her hands so tight around the knife, her skin so tight against her skull, white and red smashing and blurring into a soft hazy pink. Strained, smooth white of her knuckles and the flaring crimson ribbons of his blood. Panicked, opal gleam of her eyeballs, rushing red rivers of the tiny veins moving over it. Ice-pale skin of her cheeks, dewed with tears and sweat and all the fear made flesh oozing from her pores, against the rosebud flush of her lips that were parted, but letting escape no sound.

He let her tug and slice at him a little longer, let her think that she was winning, and then he flung her off like a biting rat, her body slewing over the floor and slamming into the wall of the room.

She lay there a while, shuddering like a frightened dormouse, soft and plump and with dazed eyes that shrank from his shadow, dim and swaying under the lone lightbulb that hung from a fraying wire.

"You should have let me have it," he chided gently.

No response, only the little tremors of her rounded body, the kind of girl Rubens might have liked to paint. Her dark hair was long, cut deliberately ragged in a self-inflicted attempt at fashion, and it feathered over the planes of her face like dozens of daggers.

Her breaths sawed at the pauses between his words, and then she raised her head to show him that really almost pretty face, spoilt by too much cheap make-up and the contortions of fear. "You can have it, whatever it is." Quick, darting words. "Just take it and get out. Take it! Just please - please, don't hurt me."

That expression so instantly recognisable; he could read faces like the words stamped on a page, and he'd read this one so often. It was almost awe, and almost scorn, but what it truly was was revulsion.

"Hurt you?" He arched an eyebrow, and dropped the knife to the floor. It clattered, spun in a half-circle like a grotesque game of spin and kiss. "You pulled a knife on me. You attacked me." He kicked it across the stone floor to her, not caring if she picked it up.

Defiance, flashing in two hot streaks over her cheeks. "You followed me! I don't stop to see what strangers want, I know what happens that way!"

"You have something of mine," he told her coolly and gestured, trying to stop his hand trembling. "That necklace."

"This? It's just some piece of crap I nicked."

His lungs crushed down tight, shrinking as hope blossomed for the first time in so many years. "Where from?" he demanded. "When?"

She eyed him and obviously decided to humour the madman. "Some house up on Marley's Parade. I don't know, we crashed a party, I got it from some chick's room." Her face said she wanted to ask more, like why he thought it was his -but maybe she had some small amount of sense.

"Give it to me," he said sharply. Marley's Parade. A place - a location. She could be here, in this very city, after he'd searched blindly thorugh so many. The necklace was hers, for sure, the very same he'd gifted her so long ago when he'd been only a man and not a monstrosity. He'd paid a witch to locate it, using his own ring made from the same piece of silver, and she'd sent him here.

He'd thought it would be just another in a long trail of dead ends. But maybe...

Just maybe.

Stupid girl, almost wrenching it off: what if she snapped the chain? She might have been disgusted if she wasn't still so scared; but fear would keep her docile. He needed her afraid, long enough for him to get far away, for a face like his was never forgotten. "Fine, have it."

Tingling as she threw it at his feet, making a hot wash of anger go through him. How dare she treat it so carelessly, so cavalierly...but he quashed it. This would not be like Bologne again, not this time. He would temper his rage, and she would live to squat another night in this squalid hole, if that was living.

He took a step forward, and scooped it from the floor, a little puddle of silver chain. "You should never have stolen it," he said harshly. "But maybe I should thank you for it."

She cowered back into the corner of the room, this place filled with her ghastly collection of possessions - the ragged sleeping bag, and scattered food wrappers, and a tatty fabric bag that might hold her clothes, and a few other results of her taking ways. He could feel only a terrible pity for her, pity for a girl who lived like this and would die like this too. Maybe die in a situation like this, faced with someone who had no mercy.

He'd learned mercy. Learned it in blood and fire and agony.

He was used to people staring at him - oh, how they always stared, though they tried so hard not to - but not like this. Not like he was become death, the reaper striding out over the earth. And then he realised what she thought 'thanking' meant; it was scored there in those big blue eyes, so childish.

"Please, no..." she croaked.

He lowered his eyelids, shielding the power of a luminous green gaze from her. The kind of green, he'd been told once upon a falling star, that emeralds might drown in. The kind of green - and he thought he felt the spider-light touch of fingernails sliding over his lips - that luck was made from.

But all his luck had been bad.

Until now.

And then he dug out his wallet, and flung all the bills in it on the floor. "I didn't mean to scare you," he said flatly. "And I wouldn't have hurt you if I hadn't had to."

Her face told him everything. Monsters could only lie, it said. What was destroyed could not be neither truth nor beauty. And yes, he was destroyed, long lost to all he had loved.

His fingers closed hard about the necklace.

But now...

X - X - X - X - X

Sally Lupin was the only person Marina had ever met who could look beautiful when she cried.

The tears slid over her skin like dewdrops, like pearls, like diamonds, spilling out of those unbelievable pale turquoise eyes, coloured so delicately they seemed to have been painted in watercolours, big eyes with a wicked little tilt to them that could appear seductive when Sally wanted.

Seductive, however, was the last thing on her best friend's mind as she hurled herself onto the sofa, beating the arm with her fists in a way that only Sally could pull off.

"Oh, Rina," she moaned, shifting her elbows onto the chair to cup that enviously lovely heart-shaped face. "Rina, what am I going to do without him? He was my everything, my moon-"

"What," Marina said, trying not to smile, "he was a lifeless lump of rock? Agreed, but-"

Sally shook out the glorious sheet of silvery hair that had made her so much money part-time modelling. Marina was used to the little bubble of envy that rose up in her stomach - it was part and parcel of being friends with Sally - but sometimes she wished she could look like that. Just a little. Even if it did get Sally into all these messes.

Maybe because it got her into all these messes.

"No," she bewailed, pushing herself off the sofa to spin around and around the room, clutching at her heart like it would fall out otherwise. "You don't understand, he was...wolf-hearted."

After growing up together, Marina was used to Sally's odd comparisons. It was always the moon, or hunting - she called life the Great Hunt - or wolves. In anyone else, it would have been odd. In the radiant bundle that was Sally, it was merely quirky. Guys thought it sweet, and besides, they didn't mind being compared to wolves, and her friends just rolled their eyes and listened patiently.

"He was a cute guy with a hot car and a big-" The boy who came in had dancing tawny eyes and he slung the tissues and galactic-sized bar of chocolate on the floor with abandon. "Wallet."

Sally eyed him suspiciously. Then she giggled. "All right, maybe it wasn't that serious..."

Kaffir Lybica, wearing a rip-off 'fcuk me' T-shirt and a pair of alarmingly flattering green khakis, raised an eyebrow. "How long were you two dating, my lovely?"

If Sally was a the sun at noon, shining and vital, Kav was a black hole, all cryptic comments and sly, wicked glances, inexorably pulling people to him.

Even if he was living in the juvenile delinquent centre, and things did tend to vanish when he was around, Marina couldn't help but like him. He was hopelessly unrepentant, and he never stole from people he liked, and he'd gotten into more than one fight on their behalf.

Sally sniffed, a final tear trailing over her face. "It felt like forever."

Kav shook his head, tousling dark hair further. "How long?"

The full lips tembled into a smile. "Two days," Sally admitted, and at Kav's exasperated look, began to laugh helplessly.

"How do you get yourself into these messes?" he sighed, and sat on the floor to break open the chocolate. "Rina doesn't."

She wishes she did though, Marina thought silently. What was it about her two friends that she didn't have? Sally was beautiful, but she wasn't perfect, and sometimes it seemed to Marina that it wasn't her looks which made her so appealing at all, not even the way she threw herself into life like a gambolling lamb, but something...other. As if she had a secret star planted in her heart that shone out to draw the world in.

Something Kav too had. Just from time to time, Marina thought she saw his eyes glowing simmering red. Only when he was angry, or hurt and it always faded if she turned to look directly at him, but still...

No, it was just wishful thinking. Just envy.

But she didn't want to be ordinary.

And as she sat there, unaware that she shared the room with a werewolf and a wildcat, Marina was unaware of just how extraordinary her life was about to become.

All because of a silver chain, and a forgotten promise.

___Every mistake I've ever made has been rehashed and then replayed  
As I got lost along the way._

X - X - X - X - X

Thank you for reading this. I'd adore hearing your thoughts.


	2. Chapter One

vening all :o) Look at this, actual, genuine updating! Continuous too; I feel so proud. Festive greetings to all of you and festive, delighted thank yous to those of ye who commented - much love and chocolate to:

**Zabella**: With any luck there will be some excitement in it :o) Though not quite up to Chimera-esque standards! It's nice to write something new occasionally - much as I love the FoF characters, I need to get away sometimes! Thanks everso!

**Falcon** :grin: I hurried up, which must be a first! Cool, I'm glad it works - I was a little worried as a necklace is a pretty tenuous hook to write a story on. My thanks!

**Dolphin**: I'm glad you like - it was started totally on a whim. Just one of those moment when the writing bugs bites down. It's definitely going to be carried on :o) It very rare for me never to finish something, even if it does take a while to do it. Merci beaucoup!

**Debbi: **Admittedly it's not Chim...but it's something I really enjoyed writing. Alarmingly, I can relate to that guy. :grin: Hey, well spotted - it is Kav. He's making a guest appearance in this story so I can take a look at his character and see how he works. He's a bit of a screwball but so far, so good. Bombardments are welcome, it'll kick me into action! Oodles of thank yous!

**Izzy:** I just get into the mood sometimes where what I write seems to work out (other days, I want to throw things at the computer.) Luckily, Strange L got written in one of those moods! Cambridge is a beautiful town. I'm not at the uni any longer - I left as they wouldn't let me change my course. Though all my friends have made me promise to go back and visit. C'est la vie. Gracias!

**Daugain Hecale**:grin: fresh meat in more ways than one in the case of this one! I'm muchly delighted that you like! I was quite unsure about posting it (it was written very late at night when I probably should have been asleep and nearly was by the time I'd finished.) Thanking you much!

Lyrics come from Texas's song 'Put Your Arms Around Me'.

Feedback is always adored; I hope you enjoy,  
Ki

**Strange Lullaby - Part One**

___Are you ready, baby, are you willing to run?  
Are you ready to let yourself drown?  
Are you holding your breath - are you ready or not?_

If he shut his eyes, the hauntings came.

They lingered smokily in his dreams, a glittering fog of words and faces and flashes of motion. They crept about the edges of his thoughts, camouflaged with the sleek cunning of vipers hung on branches or tigers crouched in savanna woodland. They passed across his emotions with the slickness of oiled blades, cutting before he had even noticed.

Memories were sometimes nothing more than knots of pain in the tangle of his life.

Or a knot in a silver chain.

He was almost angry at the girl he had taken it from, but his fingers worked it loose so tenderly, so gently that he hardly dared draw breath as he did it. It wasn't anything special, this little token of his affection from times long past and times yet to pass, but then the two of them had been nothing special. He had just been a boy who had loved a girl.

Nothing special.

But it had meant everything.

He remembered that moment when he had realised, when it had first struck him. He had known her a long time then - people seemed to think that love should be a storm, all noise and light, lancing you through the heart.

He knew differently.

Love grew, much as a weaving on a loom might. Begun with the simplest of things; events shared, words spoken, touches exchanged in a daze of innocence, with no meaning other than the chance meetings that life held. And over these fine, ghostly threads came the conversations held for the sheer joy of them, the silk of looks swapped, eyes clinging that dangerous fraction too long that quivered the pulse with a delicious tumble of uncertainty - do you see what I see, do you feel this same startling sensation - the meetings made by curiosity. And then came the rainbow colours, the days and nights filled with the outpourings of a heart stung by the pure amazing truth of someone else, the caresses and gliding brushes of fingers and hair and lips, and the knowledge too precious to be tamed by mere words, too stunning to be cheapened by actions.

Lightning love was no love at all, only a blinding to what was real. Any fool could be hit by lightning, but to craft something so fragile was a labour of the self.

He remembered too much, these days. Thought too much. He'd thought everything so simple once, that if he had love, he could change the world. It was a child's credo, a dreamer's belief.

He had refused to bend to the world, and the world had hammered him.

And for his idiocy, he'd held the body of his love in his arms, her white throat pale as a swan, bare of anything except smoke stains and his tear trails. There'd been not a mark on her; she'd only breathed too much smoke, been too close to the fire and choked on it.

So long he'd ached for that. Dead, by a fire he had begun.

But thank god, he thought, thank god she had never known what it was to burn.

X - X - X - X - X

Pale, perfect aquamarine eyes, and a delicate heart shaped face, set off by a mouth made for pouting, and maybe, he thought idly, amusing himself, kissing. Then he grinned and flung a cushion at the girl opposite him, and laughed as she squealed.

"Kav!" Sally protested, "You'll ruin my make-up!"

"You'll ruin my make-up," he parroted effortlessly, and gave her his best lecturing voice. "Come on, Sal, my lovely, like any of that really bothers you. We both know it's a good act to keep the wonderers of the world off your attractive back."

A shrug of the shoulders that were - unusually in a girl so many thought preoccupied with men, and mascara and material matters - tautly muscled, almost sinewy. "Mum says I should keep it up all the time, and that way I won't forget in the real world."

Shed of her fluttery airiness, Sally sounded almost savage, and Kav felt a sting of pity for her. Sally Lupin's family had lain low in St. Neots for a little over two decades now, but their youngest daughter had been brought up among people paranoid and dreading discovery by the Nightworld. Kav didn't know why her parents had fled - they didn't like him anyway, and the one time he'd so much as alluded to it, they'd hurled him out by the scruff of his neck - but he knew it infuriated Sally to have to hide her very nature.

No hint of the wolf could show; and he knew she'd been punished in the past for it, though she deliberately mentioned the moon, and hunting and wolves as a kind of ritual defiance. He'd seen the bruises it earned her, and stored each one in his head until the day when he could tell her parents just what he thought of them taking out their terror on their child.

"I won't tell if you don't," he said gravely, and winked, glad that it brought a hint of a smile to her lips. "And Sal...tone it down with the drama, huh? I think 'Rina's getting suspicious."

Marina... It brought the same grimace to Sally's face as it did to his, and he would bet it brought the same leaden guilt. Both of them knew that they couldn't have human friends, not really, not when they hid their world in shadows and sorrow, not when they lied with every word. The Nightworld brought truth and fear, or deceit and safety. There was no other way.

"It's too late now," she said softly, voicing his own thought. "Mum and Dad warned me, and they tried to stop us being friends but..." A hopeless lift of her shoulders. "You know me."

Kav certainly did. Tell this wanton, headstrong wolf to walk one way, and she would run in the other direction. He'd not known Marina as long - a couple of months only - but despite himself, he found he was pulled to something in her he'd not seen before; a kind of deep-set sweetness, a gentleness that was unexpected as a flower in the desert, appearing at odd moments.

He'd met her entirely by mistake; new in town, and staying at Farbrook, known to the outside world as a juvenile deliquent centre, to those within as a base for a society that called itself angels though it worked on a far more earthly plane, he'd gone to check out the thrumming, pretty streets. And he'd got off on the wrong foot with a few of the local boys, who were dumb enough to think that juvie meant idiot, that meant four of them could jump one lone stranger, however tough he looked - and Rina had walked in on the middle of it.

He'd been thrown to the ground, and they were just closing in to start kicking his ribs - and he was just about to give them the shock of their lives - when someone pushed through and stood over him.

She wasn't very tall, and she wasn't very prepossessing, but she'd glared at the quartet with cinnamon-warm eyes, shopping bags clustered in the fists she placed firmly onto her hips. "You can leave him alone," she'd told them.

The boys looked at her like she was crazy. Kav looked at her like she was crazy - didn't she know not to get involved? Crazy.

"He's juvie scum," one of them snapped, moving as if to push her aside and then dropping his hands when he realised she wasn't going to go. Didn't want to shove a lady, but hey, unfamiliar guys were no problem. "Get out of the way, Marina, we don't want you to get hurt."

"No," she said scornfully. "I've known you all my life, James Thatcher,and you, Matt, Steve, Mike, and if you want me to move, you're going to have to hit me."

One or two appeared to be seriously considering it. Then Kav bared his teeth at them, and let his eyes slide into the smouldering, unholy scarlet of his inner beast. Suddenly, all four had a burning desire to be somewhere else.

And then - then! - she had turned to him, and offered him a hand up and asked him if he was all right, and then took out some tissues and carefully cleaned the cut on his face. Kav, who'd grown up on the streets of Liverpool with a gang of shifters and wolves, was so shocked he couldn't find any words. Didn't she realise he could be dangerous?

Apparently not. And when he pointed it out, she just patiently told him that if he'd wanted to hurt her, he would have by now, and did he want her parents to give him a lift back to the centre?

Kav had been floored.

"Too late," he now echoed dryly, and moaned. "God, Sal, why don't we just tell her? I hate hiding this. She's a sweetheart, and she's not exactly a slouch in the thinking department...she must have figured out we aren't your average teenagers."

"And what then?" asked Sally dully. "It'll just be like my parents say, Kav. She'll be afraid, and she won't be able to see past the monster. They never do. Remember Terry..." And she shuddered, half-closing her eyes, that mass of silvery shining hair shivering with her.

"He wasn't Marina," Kav said flatly, a spark leaping gold in his eyes. "From what you've told me, you know you shouldn't have shown him."

"I thought he loved me," she whispered. Her breath was almost drenched in tears, but she held herself upright, held herself proud. Sally would cry crocodile tears without care for the humans she toyed with, but for the one who had mattered...no, she'd never let that shame, that pain, that bittersweet memory escape. "I thought he'd see how beautiful I was."

"I'm sorry," he said, wishing there was something he could say to steal away the glass shards that still stabbed her now and again. "I wish he'd understood. But I don't think Rina would be that way. I don't think it'd matter. This girl slapped James Thatcher when he tried spreading rumours about you!" He still laughed over that memory. He'd never known Rina possessed such a fire-lance temper.

She shook her head once, twice, and with each the sadness was consumed by determination enduring as arctic cold. "No. No, not again."

And that was the end of it.

X - X - X - X - X

Cold, cold, cold. A glass world, hung with tiny teardrop icicles, painted in shades of white and grey and blue. She fitted in so well here, her shadow cutting the glinting pavements, the swish of her clothes so tantalising as she moved.

And for once she let herself move with confidence here, on the empty street. Marina felt safe here, secure here. This was where she had grown up; she'd felt the asphalt under her feet so often, she knew where to swing smoothly aside to avoid the cracks, she knew the kerbs where she fallen and scraped her knees, and played with friends. It was home, and it was hers. One part of the world where no one judged her or demanded anything of her but that she walked past the gold-glowing windows with their pretty lace curtains each night, kicked the pebbles on driveways, went home as she did every night after school.

And then she saw him, and stopped.

He didn't belong here.

Rabid tigers didn't belong on the graceful and meticulously tended lawns of Marley's parade, and pink elephants didn't belong here, and the boy certainly didn't.

He was lounging on one of the low-slung walls that bristled around her neighbours' garden, and squinting up into the dark and smeared sky as though he found it unbelievably fascinating. All she could see was his profile, tipped upwards and made harshly pale by the streetlight. And it was an appealing profile, with the sculpted nose and marvellously moulded mouth that seemed to be smiling. Marina itched for him to notice her, to face so she could see both heavy-lidded eyes above wide cheekbones.

And then she recovered herself, and realised she had paused mid-step, staring like a complete idiot. He was just a boy, just a good-looking boy, and yes, she'd bet he was aware of it too - they so nearly always were - and she just knew suddenly, like a lead weight around her neck, that he would see her, and give her that long measuring glance that always came up with the same answer: not good enough.

Nearly. But not quite.

Marina ducked her head down, almost burying her nose in the thick red scarf she wore, wool tickling lightly, and was glad when her hair fell to cloud her face.

She concentrated on nothing as she went by, carefully not looking his way, breathing in and out-

And then she was past, and she should have been glad that he hadn't seen her but somehow, she felt a little twinge of regret because well, maybe he would have been different...

"Excuse me?"

She froze. Nice voice, she thought irrationally. No...amazing voice. Low, and husky and just that tiny, enticing hint of laziness to it. And Marina, who'd been cursed by a mother who loved sailing, swung slowly around.

And oh god, oh god.

Different? Yes, he was different all right.

One side of his face was perfection, flawless and stunning but she scarecely noticed it for the ruin on the other side. Scar tissue - buns, she thought dimly - twisted around his right eye, and over most of his cheek, clinging along his jaw and trailing off before it reached his mouth, just tugging it down at the corner so his cautious smile was lop-sided. And the eyes she'd so wanted to see, oh they were an utterly dazzling shade of green set off so well by the short, messy hair that caught crimson, but they looked at her as if he could read her mind, and were lime-bitter.

She swallowed. You're staring, you're staring, a voice shrieked. "Yes?" she managed, aware the word was too late to hide her reaction.

"I'm...looking for someone," he said, and in an effort to look at anything but his face, she found her attention dropping to his hands, and what looked like a silver chain that he was twisting in them. "I was told she lives here? I haven't seen her in years and well, I wanted to catch up. I know it's it a little odd but I moved and lost her address and all I could remember was Marley's Parade."

"What was her name?" Marina forced herself to gaze almost serenely at his face. She couldn't explain even to herself how she felt somehow ashamed that she'd looked away - after all, it wasn't his fault he looked...that way.

"I'v forgotten," he muttered, and she thought something furtive crept into that sensually slinky voice, but couldn't be sure. "But she's..." A sudden smile broke across his face like sun cresting along a wave, and Marina didn't know why, but for a moment he didn't seem at all ugly, and her stomach clenched sweetly. "Beautiful," he finished wistfully. "She's got this amazing hair - silver, almost, it's so blond. And kind of...turquoise eyes - very pale though. And she's tall, and she likes running-"

Marina didn't need any more. She'd known from the moment he mentioned the hair, because there was only one girl on Marley's Parade with incredible, fantastic, Organics advert hair that shimmered like satin in moonlight. And she was Marina's best friend.

Sally was the girl people wanted to be, skidding joyfully from one day to another with a zest that was either inspiring or nauseating., depending on whether it was your life she'd left tangled on the floor or not. She flung herself into everything without thought, and was always so terribly shocked when it went wrong and Marina was left to pick up the pieces and hand out the Kleenex - but she was generous to a fault, and surprisingly witty when she actually visited Planet Earth. Sally was radiant. and yes - beautiful, and the world ignored her flaws because of it, and she did love running, it was how she kept so disgustingly slim that Marina secretly envied her - though she tried not to, because Sally was her best friend after all...

"Yes, I do know her," she answered finally. "It's Sally Lupin you're looking for - but she's...not at her best today. Bit of a hard time. Try her tomorrow."

The boy considered it, that chain flickering in his fingers. "Could you...introduce me to her," he said. "Only I don't want to shock her. I - I'm not how she knew me."

She should have said no. Marina knew all about the boys who wanted to meet Sally. She'd dated boys only to find it was really her friend they yearned for, she'd been asked to introduce them so many times, flattered for it, and carelessly ignored when the moment Sally appearing, like the sun sliding over the horizon. Not again.

And yet...

There was something in the way he'd talked about Sally. Marina was used to hearing boys talk about her - and cry about her, on her shoulder of all things! - but never with quite that tone. Always a little reverent, and proud too, proud just to know a girl like that, and be known by her, but in this boy's voice, there was something...else.

Almost mockery.

Marina didn't understand it at all, but she found herself unaccountably intrigued. "I guess so," she said finally. "Do you have somewhere to stay...I'm sorry, I don't know your name."

She seemed to have surprised him. He blinked, and she saw even his eyelid had a faint burn along the edge, shiny new skin that must have barely saved those shocking green eyes. "No," he echoed, and tipped his head to one side, looking at her closely. "Of course you don't."

There was a long silence, while Marina waited for him to tell her. While he studied her, gaze moving smoothly up and down, yes, here it was, the appraisal she'd had from so many men and she waited for the familiar answer to shape itself in his eyes.

Only it didn't come.

He only looked on and on until she felt a flush starting to rise in her face. And then he smiled again, that skewed smile that affected her somehow. "Raith," he said simply. "My name is Raith."

"Raith," she murmured, and wondered why it didn't seem strange. It was an odd name - she'd never heard it before.

"And I do have somewhere to stay," he continued. "But...thank you for asking. Not many people would."

Marina shrugged, and privately thought him wrong. Anyone with a shred of sense wouldn't leave him out alone in the biting cold. Wouldn't leave anyone out here.

"I should be going now," Raith said. "If I lurk on the corner any longer, people are going to start thinking I'm a stalker."

"Well, aren't you?" Marina answered before she could stop herself.

His eyebrows arched, and then he laughed, the sound rippling up into the frosty air. "Only once in a lifetime," he drawled, and it seemed there was a joke in the words he didn't expect her to catch. "And every Wednesday."

"Oh, you're early then," she said lightly. "There's a whole three days to go yet. Still, I guess you have to practice."

A chuckle. "Well, it is such a highly-trained skill." Glimmers of michief on his face. "Takes years to cultivate this skulk, you know." And his expression sobered abruptly, until Marina was unsure again. "Thank you."

"For what?"

He half-turned to leave, and she caught his voice, drifting back to her over the still air. "For not looking away." A glance over his shoulder. "For not treating me like a monster."

"But you aren't!" she said, startled. She even thought that with time, his face could be...dear.

What a bizarre thought, for a boy she had just met.

A boy who wanted Sally.

She might have only imagined the last wisps of his words. "Are you sure?"

_Are you ready, maybe, do you long to confess?  
Do you feel that you're already numb?  
Are you sure of yourself?  
Would you lie if you're not?_

X - X - X - X - X

Thanks for reading! I'd love to hear your thoughts.


	3. Chapter Two

Sunshine and sweets to:

**IC Dragons:** One day I will try to get published :o) It's a 'one day' at the moment. Thank you - I'm delighted you like. I'm enjoying this story, different as it is.

**Phire Phoenix: **Raith has not had an easy time of it :) But hey, that's what you get for being tragically dumb...or at least tragically naive. :grins: With any luck things will not be entirely as they seem... Ta muchly!

**Falcon:** I'm getting better at updating, honest! Thank you!

**Debbi: **He is looking for Sally - it's her necklace, though Marina lives on the same road. :grin: Don't worry, the confusion will shake itself out! Thanking you hugely!

**Persephone:** Thanks :O) I enjoy writing - and this ones much less intense than Chim is. It flows pretty well. LOL, wish I knew how it was going to go, too! Merci!

**Shadow:** Thanks :o) I'm psyched that you like the fic. I am getting on with writing it - I'm just a little low on time at the moment. More soon, hopefully!

**Silent Luscinia:**:wry grin: No, it's Sally who's Raith's goal there. It's very true, Marina's very normal (something I have realised is very unusual in what I write). Whereas Sally is...not so. I've enjoyed writing this - the style's a little different, but I think I'm getting the feel of the characters now. Thanking you much!

**Megami-sama:**:grin: Thank you. Strange Lullaby was the product of a fair bit of wine, a lot of late nights and an inspirational burst. And a pretty necklace :) It's only a short one, but hopefully you'll see some of the character in a new series, and it won't be too dire! Thanks everso!

**Oli: **Thank you :o) It's a little different from anything else I've written (and odd setting it in a palce that a) exists and b) I've been to) but I'm having fun! Thanks!

The lyrics are from Avril Lavigne's "I'm With You" from the album Let Go. I hope you like - comments would be muy adored, and criticism is welcomed with arms wide open!  
Ki

**Strange Lullaby Part Two**

___There's nothing but the rain  
No footsteps on the ground  
I'm listening but there's no sound  
Isn't anyone trying to find me?  
Won't somebody come take me home?_

Call it...a pilgrimage.

Yes. That would do. She liked the taste of it on her tongue; it took away the coppery sweetness of old blood and made it something.pure. It made her more than a voyeur dragged back to watch and remember again and again. It made her more than a murderer, pulled like a ravenous hyena to lick at sandy bones. It made her more than a wrongness in the world.

It made her holy.

She'd examined that time over and over, trying so hard to examine the strange crack in her soul, this jagged flaw that made blood feel like silk on her hands, and honey in her mouth. This need to destroy that painted her nights in scarlet swathes.

He'd not been the first, of course. But he'd been the first she had loved, in the odd pitying way that the predator loves the prey, loving the flashes of its weakness shining out in the night to draw her, loving the hunger that she both fought and embraced.

Humans; they had such a frail beauty, a tender porcelain grace to them that mere breath could cloud. Oh, you had to be so gentle with them, so careful to cherish their delicacy and to imitate their clumsy, coloured world.

It might have been hard, if she hadn't practised so long. Easy to be brash, and loud and insensitive, To feign tears and laughter, and even anger. So easy that she had fooled even her own family.

They didn't know it - they hadn't a clue, but Sally Lupin was long cold.

She'd felt the difference as she grew. In learning to act, she had had to learn the truth of what people were and she knew - she saw now - that even her own kind were not like her. They killed for need. For food. For release.

Not for pleasure.

Their prey was just a target. Yet Sally found herself fascinated by people, by knowing that within they were bags of bone and blood and tissue, yet somehow this meat thought and felt and wished for higher things.

She'd torn so many apart, trying to find what it was in them that made them different. Looking for their thoughts in their flesh and finding nothing. She'd buried them all deep, deep in the soil, deep in the dark, deep in her lies.

Kav would have been so shocked if he'd known. He thought himself so wise, so tough, but he would never condone her killings. But then he didn't know. He saw only the boys she used as a screen for the dizzy human act she put on, and he never thought they might be a smokescreen for another purpose.

To hide the other ones.

The world saw the boys Sally Lupin dated, and dropped, and so no one thought of the ones who...passed through. Hitchhikers. Tourists. The homeless. The ones that no one would miss.

Ever since Terry...she'd been careful. Careful never to grow close to the humans around her.

All bar one. Marina. She'd tried so hard not to feel affection for her, not to let her turn from an acquaintance to a friend but she found herself horrifyingly fascinated by this girl who treated her like family more than her own blood did. Startled by her loyalty, by the unexpected contrast of her sweet nature and a fierce flashing temper that soared up in defence of Sally, and Kav and Marina's own family.

And for years now, Sally had felt the urge tugging at her. Stronger each time, wanting to see if maybe there would be something in Marina's blood and flesh that would taste different, that would tell her what made humanity.

When she looked at Marina, she saw blood.

Redder and redder until Sally sometimes thought she might faint from it. Trailing down her face, over her throat, and over the human girl's stomach until she was only porcelain prey to be cracked open and ripped up until the truth of what she was lay in ribbons, until Sally could see why these people were warm and alive, why they were not cold and devoid as she was.

If she knew, she could be like them.

But not Marina, Sally thought, not her. And the other part, that craved so desperately to be what she was not said, yes, Marina, she will be the answer. We know now the others were not. But Marina will be. She has to be.

And if Marina was the answer...she wouldn't no longer have to be this...this...

Pilgrim.

Yes, the pilgrimage. That was what was important.

She slid lightly onto her window ledge, and looked down at the drop, and spread her arms as if they were wings, tilting forward her head so the long silvery hair sheeted like a waterfall towards the ground that seemed to want to soak her up, take her in, snuggle her deep in it once again.

And she fell.

X - X - X - X - X

Raith didn't know why he'd told her his name.

He'd held it to him so long, shy and secret, that it no longer seemed his. And he didn't know why he'd told it to a girl who he scarcely knew. It had just been the freshness and simple lack of pity in her face when she had looked at him. The way she'd been ashamed of flinching from his ruined face. And maybe just something in the way she smiled.

What if...

No. Both of them, here? It couldn't be possible...could it?

Stupid. He'd come for his soulmate; to tell her. To show her. To put right what had gone so wrong all those years ago. What the necklace meant, and what it did not mean.

He couldn't afford to be distracted, not after last time.

But still...he could only recall her blurted words but you're not a monster . How long since anyone had ever seen past the scars? Had they ever?

Perhaps it was true. Just perhaps.

He was halfway across the road when something flickered in the corner of his eye. From one of the houses, like a slash of moonlight falling to the ground. He turned, sure, certain.

Her.

There.

Now.

His mind whirled, screamed, howled-

And then he heard the horn blare, and saw his shadow cast bright and long on the tarmac in front of him and the squeal of brakes before he was flung into the air, and crashed onto the ground like a rag doll.

X - X - X - X - X

"Hospital duty," Kaffir Lybica grumbled. "Bloody hospital duty."

The girl opposite gave him a faint grin, savage on her sharp foxy face. Red hair curled wickedly around her ears, damp at the ends, though most of it was messily pinned up onto her head. "If you'd stop getting into trouble, Kav, we wouldn't be here. Angels are supposed to be discreet."

"Angels," he carried on, blithely ignoring her. "What kind of a name is that? No one's going to hark me singing-"

"I heard you in the shower," the redhead said sweetly. "I harked, I cringed, I ran. And the name got given to us. We didn't choose it."

He acknowledged it with a shrug, sitting on the uncomfortable benches in the waiting room. Angels. To the Nightworld and Daybreak alike, they were a mystery. A collection of people who struck like lightning into fights, into hostage situations, into trouble. Who rescued, who collected, yet who could never be relied on. Sometimes they saved people and sometimes information - and sometimes they left both to rot - on both sides.

Kav didn't think he could have found a better job. He loved the edgy danger, the white-hot thrill of fighting and knowing everyone who wasn't an angel had reason to kill him. Of knowing what others didn't, and most of all, of the family it had drawn around him.

But he hated drudge work. And watching hospitals in case any Nightpeople got brought in - and sneaking them out before anyone could examine them, mind-wiping staff and other patients alike - was drudgery.

"It was just one fight," he muttered plaintively.

"With sixteen other people," Vanya said dryly, filing her nails absently. Her blue-black eyes danced as he stuck his tongue out. "Not great odds."

Kav yawned widely, stretching out his arms above his head. "True. I outnumbered them at least ten million braincells to one. And they had to pass that one round every time one of them wanted to talk."

"You know Neo doesn't like us mixing it up with the locals." The werewolf - or half werewolf, at any rate - waggled a finger at him. "And if I hadn't helped-"

"You wouldn't be here." The wildcat cut her off with a deliberately insolent roll of his eyes. Honestly, did she always have to lecture him? "Fine, yes, I am an irresponsible wild child, I believe in free love, free booze and kicking ass but I didn't ask you to help me out."

"I wasn't going to let you get kicked to bits," she protested. "It's just- "

Both of them started as the doors to the A&E burst opened and a pair of medics hurried in with a stretcher. A scarlet-stained blanket covered most of the figure but what little they could see as the stretcher was swung into a cubicle was gory and mingled with pieces of granite and mud. Kav's nose wrinkled as he inhaled the sharpness of blood mingling with the heaviness of asphalt.

"Kav!" hissed Vanya, elbowing him swiftly in the ribs. "He's Nightworld. Vampire from the smell."

The feline shifter didn't need to ask how she knew; Vanya's nose was sharper than his would ever be - she had told him once her world was all scent. "The world stinks," had been her pithy comment, and he still didn't know if she had been joking or not.

"Okay," he said quickly, "you mind-blind the medics and the doctors, whenever they turn up, I'll take him off to Farbrook-"

And then he saw the girl running in behind them, nose red from the cold, and his heart near stopped.

Marina, in tumbled disarray, with her scarf half-flung around her neck and her little bag loose and open in her hand. There was mud -and blood - on her hands, and he didn't need to ask who had called the ambulance.

She almost skidded to a stop at the sight of him, after a quick glance at that pathetic, still figure. Her face was pale, but he could see she had firm grip on her emotions. Happily - luckily - she didn't seem to notice the paramedics were standing still, arms hanging limply as they stared into a foggy distance.

"Kav? What are you doing here?"

He groped wildly for a reply, and couldn't think of one. What was Marina doing with a strange vampire? "What are you doing here?" was his weak answer.

She bit her lip, and her eyes slid to the boy. "He...I was talking to him. Met him on the street - he's a visitor, an old friend of Sally's," she said quietly, and her eyelids dropped shut for a moment. "We said goodbye, and I was almost home when I heard someone's brakes just screaming and, oh god, there was this horrible thud..."

And you went to see, Kav finished silently, laying a hand on her arm because it was the only comfort he knew how to give her.

"Poor baby," he said gently.

A wry, if tremulous smile was his answer. "Poor nothing. He's the one who's hurt." A frown, so rare on her face. "But why are you here?"

"Community service," Vanya cut in flatly, hands on her hips. Her inky eyes swarmed with barbs of sapphire fire, and she just turned her wrist outwards slightly so that Marina caught the gleam of a blade. That mental voice was all spicy silk and sharp words. _What's wrong, Lybica? Can you only think with your muscles? We need to get this sweetheart out of the way if we're going to hustle this guy out of here._

That's not the right way to go about it, Kav thought, looking at Vanya's belligerent, scornful expression - so wrong after he'd never known her as anything but bouncy and cheerful, but of course, she had to be tough growing up in Farbrook. Or at least learn to feign it.

Not the right way at all - Rina doesn't take intimidation well.

_But Van-_

Before he could warn her about Rina's stubborn streak, Vanya cut him off.

"Any other questions...girlie?"

Colour rushed into Marina's face like steam billowing from ice - and her eyes had cooled from cinnamon to granite, as her stance changed, just ever so slightly, to something Kav had seen before - a mother cat ready to fight. Fierce, and...protective? Yes, she was shielding the vampire from Vanya. What was going on?

"Excuse me?" So perfectly polite.

Oh hell, thought Kav. Handbags at twenty paces.

"Girls..." he said tentatively.

Two faces turned to him. Neither could be called beautiful, yet both had their own strange something. In Vanya, it was the rough, unpolished hardness of a flawed gem, potential and promise simmering under her skin, bursting out in her impulsiveness and ferocity. In Marina, the flower- smooth warmth that opened under affection, yet with thorns that lay unseen.

"Girls?" they said in unison and then glared at each other.

"Ladies," amended Kav hastily. "Please, there's enough oestrogen in the air to make me start feeling broody. Can we just get this guy out of here-"

The horrified look on Vanya's face told him he had said too much.

"Get him out?" Marina gestured to him, her voice a little shriller than usual. "Kav, he needs hospital treatment! You don't know anything about medicine, don't be so stupid."

"You had to make friends with the locals," Vanya grumbled under her breath, a husky growl rolling under her words. "You had to choose this year to shake off your attitude and turn into Mr Socially Acceptable-"

"Oh god..."

The voice didn't belong to any of them; it was slurred, and low and dragged on the air like heavy velour over the floor. Marina spun, colour draining from her face to leave her pale and ghostly as the boy in the bed sat up.

He was streaked with blood, but in the mess of features - boy, that was a face for radio - two green eyes shone out with an ungodly, luminescent emerald light, moving with the slow dance of firebugs in summer heat. Gingerly, the boy slid out of the bed, clothes torn and rumpled, his shoulder still dislocated-

There was a popping sound, a little like cereal crunching, and it eased back into place.

"Oh, that smarted," he commented casually, rolling it.

Marina's jaw worked, her eyelashes were black lace flat on her skin and Kav knew she was going to scream-

Vanya clapped a hand over her mouth. _Kav,_ the wolf shouted, _I can't mind-blind her. She's immune!_

He wanted to just collapse onto the floor. Oh, not good. Not good at all. A doctor burst in with the quick, efficient run of a man who saved lives daily and knew his job - and froze, one leg in midair as Vanya desperately mind-blinded him.

"Please..." the boy was gazing at Marina with those wide, startling eyes, and there was a gentle warmth in his voice, turning it from sleepiness to well, something like the seductive purr Kav himself used when he talking to an attractive girl. But...even Kav found this guy hard to look at, and he thought he had seen all the ugliness and harshness the world could hurl at him. "It's all right. I didn't mean to scare you."

Marina wrenched herself free, hands balled into fists although she trembled. "But I saw you - lying there. Your leg - there was bone sticking out of it! And...you..."

Shallow, fast breaths filled the air and Kav could think of nothing to solve this situation. None of Farbrook's carefully prepared lies covered moments like this. He really didn't think 'it's a trick of the light' was going to cut the mustard.

The boy moved towards her, hands outspread, almost gliding with a grace that didn't match his appearance. "I know."

"Then..." Oh god, she was frightened - she was terrified, backing away from all three of them. Sally had been right - Marina should never have to be touched by the tainted brilliance of their world. She was too delicate, too fragile, standing there so marble-white, china in their hands. Kav could see the sea-shell shimmer of tears in her eyes, one sliding down her face. "Then what?"

Kav was frozen, afraid himself now, afraid because he heard the screams of mobs ringing in his ears, because he knew how powerful fear could be. Men would murder gladly to rid themselves of that they feared: to let themselves believe it was safe to walk in darkness, they would kill and burn and stampede to be rid of anything that was different.

He knew he was slowly beginning to shift, he felt his bones melting into liquid heat and could do nothing to stop it. Yeah, he knew what Rina saw that made her shiver uncontrollably, backed into a corner. The rapacious crimson roaring in his eyes, the fangs revealed by his lips skinning back, the claws that had sprouted to replace nails.

One glance at Vanya told him she had even less control; her scarlet hair was moulding itself onto her neck and her jaw had begun to lengthen; of them all, only the strange boy was calm, and of them all, he had least reason to be so.

"It's terribly simple," the boy murmured with a gentleness that seemed to soothe Marina.

Marina was fixed on the boy - she refused to look at anything else - at them - and Kav ached for it. This is what I am, he wanted to scream. I wanted to tell you, I wanted to, but now I know it was idiocy. You can't accept me, you're afraid and our friendship is broken.

"We aren't human."

She swallowed hard, her palms flat against the wall as if she wanted to sink into it. "Then what are you?"

"We don't have time for this!" snarled Vanya roughly, fur covering her arms to the wrist, sleek and long like an extra coat. "There's more people on the way - I can't hold anyone else."

The boy tilted his head, never making a move towards Marina. "She's right. If I stay here, they'll find out I'm not...like them. I know you're scared - I was too, when I first found out - but at least you're rational. Haven't you ever seen what scared people do?"

For the first time, she looked directly at Kav, and she didn't shrink or flinch though her skin greyed even further. Miserable, wanting it over, expecting fear-fuelled anger or insults, he almost turned and ran.

But there was only solemn regard, up and down. "Do you remember how we met?" she said, just to him. "Those boys - they were afraid of you. They didn't know you. I...don't want to be like that. Go on, go. I won't tell anyone."

"Come with us," Kav blurted before he could stop himself. It was stupid - she hadn't seen much, in a few days she would rationalise it into nothing. "Please - you don't really understand."

He didn't need to look over at Vanya to know her face was astounded. _Are you nuts?_ she shrieked. _Aren't we risking enough? We should be killing her, Kav, not coddling her!_

He ignored her, as he ignored the woodpecker-pounding of his heart and the icy fear that streamed in his veins. "Come with us - let us show you. We aren't monsters."

For some reason, Marina looked over at the strange boy, who smiled crookedly and spread wide his hands. And something seemed to hang in the air, a lightning seed, turning and growing.

A deep breath as the sound footsteps became clear. More medical staff coming to do their job. "Let's go," she said in a rush and the fright was still evident in the way she held herself, the nervous gestures - but she was trying. "Before I change my mind."

X - X - X - X - X

A pilgrimage through the snow, her path hung with the flickering lights of memory. Ice crunched and chimed under her feet as she moved into the woods, tiny icicles hanging fang-like from branches, conifers dusted with frost.

The cold didn't touch her. It was nothing to the ice age that had lain inside her all her life, a wide polished hollow that reflected back emptiness to infinity. Only blood filled it, only meat filled the hunger.

Sally was careful - she was always careful. The clothes she wore were new- bought, and she would shed them and burn them before she left, and go back in her pelt, rolling in the shallow tributary of the Cam that ran through this little patch of scraggly forest. No scent to track then, no knowledge whose feet trampled here.

It was a good, safe hours walk, this little place. Longer when she carried the weight of a body - or remains - with her. Tribute, she thought carefully, erasing that word from her mind. Not remains - tribute.

She had chosen this place for more than its remoteness though. She had chosen it because it seemed to her she walked in her dreams.

Those dreams of a warm living land and a life that was not easy but neither was it hollow. Strange dreams, of working in the fields, back aching from bending all over all day to plant seeds and later, to pluck fruit. Of scrubbing pots and eating, of being ringed by a family, of feeling laughter crease her face and a fire warming her chapped hands.

Strange dreams that only made her hollow heart all the emptier.

Most of all, she dreamed of the boy, though he never seemed to change like the other faces around her. They grew young, grew old, died, returned. The boy was only ever young, and only ever in the same two scenes over and over.

The boy, with his fine, carven features as regal as royalty and solemn - wrong on a full mouth made for joy and kisses. The bright, blazing green of his eyes burned into her and she understood he was telling her something important, yet the words never sank in. Instead, she concentrated on the twisting of the necklace as he rolled it in his hands. A necklace she recognised as the very same she had lost a couple of weeks ago.

The boy staggering from a house - no, a hut - that poured forth black, thick smoke with a body in his arms and the beautiful face marred and destroyed by blisters and screaming red burns, one arm the same mess, and tears streaming down his cheeks while people beat at the flames with rough, soaked sacking and her family watched their home burn.

She knew what they meant. She had lived before. But that life meant nothing to her; it was gone, it was empty and she understood nothing of what it was supposed to signify.

She only understood this life, this death.

And this pilgrimage.

She stopped, here at last. The earth here was soft, close to the river, easy to dig in. And how often had she dug here, to bury them deep and let the ground hold her tribute, her sacrifices.

Always, she tried to stop herself from coming. From falling onto the soft earth as she did now, and stabbing her hands into it, feeling it give way beneath her. Only this one grave, ever, but this one was her weakness.

He was bone now - bones she tugged out to turn in her hands, to touch and caress the smoothness, brushing off the muck. She'd licked them clean long ago, thinking that if she devoured him, those human qualities would become hers, would seep inside her.

Terry had been so human.

So very human. Handsome too, with startlingly green eyes that had seemed to her utterly familiar. She'd thought him another human toy, a boy who talked the talk, and walked the walk, but with her, he had shown her another side. An unexpected sweetness, sweeping out like a peacock's tail, a grace and selflessness where she was concerned; he had treated her as fragile - when in truth, he was the frail one, he was the porcelain figure.

And Sally had loved him. How she had loved him. For the first time, she had felt something invading the void inside her, something like heat, something like life - and at last, she had decided it was time to show him. To show him the beauty, the power of what she was.

She had been so sure he would understand. And then she would make him as herself, and he would teach her how to be warm. He would teach her how to be human in an inhuman life.

Secretly, she had planned it. He had told no one; she had told no one until Kav, later, when she had said only that Terry had run away. She had even gone so far as to make his parents believe they had seen him, toying with their minds easily as she toyed with her string of admirers.

Brought him here - and shown him.

And the horror on his face was etched on her forever. The sound of his screams - the sight of his tears. He'd called her monster, and tried to run, crashing blindly towards safety, hardly able to see by the silvery light of the moon.

How disappointed she had been. How angry. How very, very angry.

She hadn't changed him; she had killed him, and tried to consume his humanity. But it hadn't worked. Every time, she thought it would be different. Every time, it was the same.

But Marina...

She was positive Marina would be different. Those others - they had desired her. They had loved her in an impure way. But Marina...Marina seemed to her like the family she dreamed of - something Sally had been part of once.

Yes...she thought, hugging the bones to her. She would fight it no longer. Marina would be the last.

The one.

X - X - X - X - X

Marina had never been inside Farbrook, the juvenile delinquent centre. Though now, of course, once she was inside the spacious manor house, with no signs of security beyond the barbed wire outside it, and the security guards on the gate - now she saw it wasn't a prison at all. More of an office.

People nodded at Kav and the other girl, who had a distinctly petulant curl to her mouth. Friendly greetings from men and women of all ages; Marina even saw children, playing dress-up in a lounge with a few adults looking on and applauding. Interested glances at her and Raith, who walked beside her as if he hadn't a care in the world.

Somewhere along the way, when the fear returned in great heaving waves, he had taken her hand as if he knew what she was thinking, the scars strange to feel, smooth and yet wrong. And Marina had only clutched it tight like a child, and prayed she lived through this...this topsy-turvy night.

Kav took them into a small anteroom, furnished with elegant sofas that were surprisingly comfortable though he stayed standing, arms folded. The other girl - the furry one - had left at some point. Marina didn't know when; she could hardly think. He was staring at Raith with an odd expression on his face, staring as the boy - who seemed to her the most human of them all - sat beside her in his tattered clothes.

"I was your age when I found out."

Marina turned her head to look at his face. Not beautiful - only ugly - but somehow reassuring. Those incredible eyes were no longer glowing, only filled with compassion. "What happened?"

A deep sigh, and he leaned his head back against the sofa. "I found out the hard way. I was attacked and changed into...what I am. I think she meant to kill me at first, but-" He broke off, and a bitter laugh escaped him. "My face saved me, would you believe? This was before...the accident. She said I was too beautiful to die, so she changed me."

"Who?" Marina found herself drawn in by the sorrow in his voice.

A shrug. She could look at his face without pain, she found. He seemed not to care about it - why should she? "I never knew her name. I thought she was mad, or lying. I just lay there, until I blacked out - though I found out later I had actually died. And I woke again."

Hesitation in her heart, but she had to know. "As what?"

The strange, eerie glow filled his eyes but she felt no danger. If he had wanted to hurt her, he could have, back on that lonely street. And then he bared his teeth, and she saw the two long, icy-pale fangs that curved from his mouth.

Oh dear lord. "You're a vampire!"

Useless saying they didn't exist, they were folk stories, fairy tales. Patently they did. So did...werebeasts. Who knew what else did?

"Yes." Raith ducked his head, almost ashamed. "We don't drink blood because we like it, though. We need it. Without it, we die - really die. And it won't kill. A lot of people...well, they like it."

"A lot don't," Kav remarked flatly. "But he's right. Most of them only drink from willing donors. There are some bad ones about - just like you've got serial killers, so have we - but most of them don't kill, and don't hurt."

She heard the wariness in his voice. The hurt. She'd never seen Kav anything but his sassy, sparkling self and it stung her to think she had hurt him. It stung her to know that when she thought of him, of his body changing like that, the fear returned. He was Kav, whatever else he was.

"Can I..." Marina pursed her lips, then decided. "Can I touch them?"

Surprise on both boys' faces. Then Raith smiled ruefully, and again she felt that strange feeling of delight in it. "If you want," he answered.

Gently, Marina put one hand along his face, along the scarred side and heard his sharp indrawn breath. Those luminous green eyes, green as grass, green as the luck that had surely deserted him, watched her with a kind of wonder.

Marina felt no revulsion at all as she ran her hands across his face, feeling the difference in the hardened, sometimes slick and sometimes rough burns and the flawless, unmarred skin. Her fingers trailed over the thin scar that ran out from under his eye, over the curled-down corner of his mouth, before she brushed her thumb over his lips, and over the wickedly sharp fangs.

Now she thought about it, none of them had made any hostile move towards her. They had even been afraid - she remembered the look on Kav's face in the hospital, when he stood there with his claws coiled in on themselves, the naked dread on it singing at her. She thought perhaps even the girl's anger had come from fear.

How often have they seen this? How have people only seen the monster and not the...

Yes, the beauty. The way they moved was lovely, was like watching a dance being created, a dance to which she knew the steps were ever forbidden, the music not for her ears. The way they spoke, the way they held themselves - maybe that was why people feared them. Because they were different.

"Thank you," she said quietly, and then did something that startled even herself; she kissed him on the cheek. And from the look on his face, she knew it had been a very long time since anyone had touched Raith that way.

He shook his head dumbly. "Every time I think I understand people, I'm wrong," was all he said.

Someone cleared their throat pointedly, and Marina turned her head to see the hostile girl was back, with an older man.

"You seem to be taking the news very well," the man remarked, and gave her a surprisingly sunny smile that flashed white teeth with canines - now she was looking - just a little too long. He must have been in his forties or fifties, with a demeanour Marina could only describe as stately. Grey flecked the sides of his black hair, and lines spread from his eyes and lips but he moved with a fluid grace identical to that of Kav and Raith. "Unlike most people. I'm Neofelis Jubatus, and I suppose I run this place, if you can imagine anyone managing to control Kaffir. Most people call me Neo."

"I'm not uncontrollable," Kav argued, with a fierce glare.

The man - Neo - chuckled gently. "Of course you are. You have been ever since you came here. It's part of your charm."

"What..." Marina wasn't sure it was polite to ask these people, but she needed to know. "What are you?"

Neo looked at her gravely and she couldn't help but notice his strange yellow-green eyes with almost...oval pupils. "I myself, this place, us?"

"All of them."

He moved to take a seat on the other side of the room. Kav did the same, still wary though the older man seemed perfectly relaxed.

"I myself am a shapeshifter. I doubt you know anything about us, so let me dispel - and confirm - some of the myths. All shapeshifters can change into one animal whenever they want. I am a panther. Full moon has nothing to do with any shapeshifter except for werewolves, who must change that night. Silver harms us, but we heal remarkably fast from most other materials."

"Yeah," Kav put in, with a cheeky grin at the man, "but if we get decapitated or hit by a train, we're just as dead."

Neo inclined his head. "You may be interested to know witches also exist -and of course, you know your friend is a vampire. Collectively, the non- human races - there are others, though not as populous - are called the Nightworld. Most of us are harmless. Some are not - and for that reason, we live in secrecy."

Marina nodded slowly. She could understand that. She could even take in most of what he was saying, though it still seemed incredible.

"This place is...well, think of it as a charity. We take in Nightworld children who have been abandoned by their families for one reason or another, those who are hunted or persecuted and those who just want a safe place for their children. Several families in the town began here."

"Sally's did," Kav said unexpectedly. "Her family are werewolves. We...we wanted to tell you, Rina, but we were afraid of how you'd take it."

And now, Marina could hardly be surprised. The strangeness she had seen in Kav had shone out from Sally too.

"What are you?" she asked him, curiously. It was becoming harder and harder to remain afraid, not with this calm quiet man who radiated reassurance - who reminded her a little of her own father - and Kav sitting there twitchy and lively as ever.

He wrinkled his nose. "I can show you - if you want." He sounded unsure, something Kav never was. "If you don't mind being a little grossed out."

She couldn't help but laugh. "Oh, Kav, you've grossed me out so often I think I'm immune."

Her friend mouthed furiously, and finally settled for shooting a glare at her. And then his body began to change, as if it was becoming fluid, reforming in a series of crackles and pops that sounded like a horde of fireworks. She watched, astonished more than anything as his body contorted and compacted-

And then she was staring at what looked like a big tabby cat.

"Oh my god, that's so cute!" she said before she could control herself and received a filthy look from the cat - from Kav - in return. "Can I pet you?"

Across the room, she could see Neo's shoulders shaking.

The cat seemed to explode into Kaffir, incensed. "Can you pet me?" His voice was absolutely appalled. "Why don't you just buy me a tin of Kitekat and a collar while you're at it." Then a positively evil grin curled over his mouth. "On second thoughts, my lovely, you can pet me any time you want."

Neo stood, nodding to them. Although he wasn't very tall, he had a presence about him that wasn't at all unearthly, merely the aura of someone who knew what it was to lead. "I'll leave you to discuss everything," he suggested wryly. "If you want to change or get clean, Kaffir will show you where the showers are. And hopefully he won't leer too much."

"I don't leer, I admire," the shapeshifter said haughtily.

Neo's arched eyebrow said otherwise. "Why don't you stay for dinner, Marina, and - Raith, is it? Learn a little more about the place. People will be glad to tell you whatever you want to know."

"She's got me," declared Kav. "I'm a fount of knowledge."

"Only if she wants to know about FHM and football," came the pithy voice of the girl Marina had argued with as she stuck her head round the door. "Come on, we'll give you the guided tour."

A new world, Marina thought dazedly, getting to her feet. A new world all in one night.

What on earth would happen tomorrow?

___It's a damn cold night  
Trying to figure out this life  
Won't you take me by the hand, take me somewhere new  
Don't know who you are but I…  
I'm with you._

X - X - X - X - X

Thank you for reading - I'd adore hearing what you think!


	4. Chapter Three

Updates, huh? They're like buses...ages between them, and then two turn up at once.

Many blessings to all of you who have commented - thanks and answers are at the end of this part. You're all fabulous!

As you may well have gathered, comments are adored, pored over, revered, cheered and worshipped most humbly. I love hearing what you think and criticism is always welcome!

Big shout out and kudos to the fabulous guys who beta'd this for me (how did I get by without you?): Mi, Ari, and the lovely Jo. Lyrics from Aqualung's 'Strange and Beautiful'.

It's long. I'm sorry. Hope you enjoy!

**Strange Lullaby Part Three**

_I've been watching your world from afar  
I've been trying to be where you are  
And I've been secretly falling apart  
Unseen._

"Don't you like it?"

Marina was staring down at a plate of fried food, bacon crisped almost into char, just the way Kav knew she liked it. She glanced up and his golden eyes were too soft, wounded.

"I'm just not hungry," she said, and sighed. "Sorry Kav. It's not the food - I mean, if I'd known you were going to play Gary Rhodes, I'd have brought a camera - it's just..."

"It's the weirdness," put in Vanya bluntly. Her ink-dark eyes were cool, her mouth sullen. She oozed mistrust. "Are we making your stomach lurch, Marina?"

Fine. The dining room was - unorthodox. The middle of the large hall was taken up by long, varnished tables and benches that people were crammed around, chatter humming continuously. Around the edge were smaller, more intimate tables. They were sat at one of those, with a perfect view of the room.

In one corner, a little girl who had furry bunny ears poking out of her hair was nibbling gingerly at a salad, and Marina was sure the grey fuzz on her hands wasn't gloves. She could see an adult - who was flashing fangs in a slightly strained smile - trying to coax out a trio of boys who were hiding under the table and flicking balls of rainbow light around. At one point, something - no, someone, she thought nervously - roared, and everywhere she looked, she saw shimmering suppleness, flickers of predatory eyes and careless, powerful motions.

But she could deal with that. Mostly.

It was the other things. It was-

"Yo, Kav, didn't know you were bringing your own food tonight," was the cool quip of the dark blond boy who paused at their table and quite casually leaned over to cup Marina's chin. "Nice veins. Mind if I have a bite-"

"I mind," she said through gritted teeth.

The boy jerked back, and she couldn't help but notice the incredible colour of his eyes - sleepy, sloe-black with the same richness as ground coffee. "Whoa! You didn't put her under? Man, you are one sick kitten...want me to do it?"

Before anyone could interrupt, he had stroked Marina's hair as if she were a five year old who'd done something unexpectedly clever, and was so close she could have quite happily head butted him. Maybe she should.

"Don't worry, sweetheart," he said chirpily, and his eyes spilled over with a slurry of liquid black until she was looking into pits that fell away into an alien, cold nothing. She was paralysed by the darkness there, drawing her in with terrible gravity. The even, hypnotic tone slid leadenly into her body, and Marina felt her head begin to spin, as if she really was falling, falling, falling. "I'll be gentle."

Stop it! she wanted to scream. She could feel the world receding from her, feel her grip upon everything weaken and slide - and horrible fear came with it, until Marina was more afraid than she had ever known she could be. God, anyone, she would be lost in that shadowy space forever, drifting bodiless and helpless while he did whatever he wanted.

"I won't."

The voice was everything that cold world was not; it had a vibrancy that shook her deep inside, that called her back like the fierce glow of a beacon trail. A way back, a way out, if only she could wrench free of this barren hell-

And then the darkness was yanked away from her as the boy was flung against the wall so hard he had to catch one of the heavy brocaded curtains to keep upright.

The boy raised his head, and he was stunning as he stood there, gold and black against the plush red of the drapes, yes, he was simply remarkable. The world spun, the sun rose, and this boy was beautiful. "Oh, he said casually, with a careless grin. "Is she yours?"

Raith was on his feet and his face was taut with anger, only the mutilated side shown to her. "No."

That smile widened further, and there was almost a swagger to the boy's step. "Didn't think so. No one'd let something like you drink from them."

There was silence, and Marina saw the way Raith's shoulders slumped, and knew it had to be a phrase he'd heard a thousand times before.

She looked from one to the other, and knew which was the monster.

"Shut up, Nate," Kav said shortly, crossing his arms.

A snort. "There's speaks the defender of the Nightworld charity cases. C'mon, Kav, we've all heard you say it a thousand times. We don't play that hideous monster role any more. We don't keep to the shadows, we walk in the damn light like every piece of vermin clogging up this world. The Dark Ages are gone -and everything that needs to hide in the dark should be gone too."

A glance round the room, and Marina found herself shocked. She had thought there would be sympathy for Raith, that people would shout Nate down - but no, silence reigned and a spectre overlaid their immaculate features. It was the insidious, nestling fear that they too could be smashed from their pedestal. The fear that lines might mar their smooth faces, that they might be ordinary. Or worse...ugly.

In all the room, in this room full of easily a hundred people - every single face was striking. And afraid.

It was wrong, and it made her uneasy in a way that nothing else had tonight.

She hadn't noticed him move, but somehow Raith was back in his chair, and the ruined side of his face was tipped down, half-covered by the hand he leaned on, half-disguised by the evening shadows. How he must have learned to use shade, she thought sadly, to diminish himself so suddenly, so totally. In this wonderful, brutal world, only half of him would ever be good enough for these people.

"Enough." The cool, curt voice was Neo, who had walked in through the door, evidently fetched by the anxious girl who scurried back to her table. "I'm well aware of the ridiculous prejudice that float saround this place, and I am sick of it."

Vanya flicked her head, and the red hair moved like flames. "It may be ridiculous, Neo, but it's true."

"True." The man's voice was flat. "Nathaniel's behaviour, Vanya, is _truly_ disgusting. In my office, Nate, and as you seem to learn it is what is within us that matters, you can consider yourself confined to your room for the next three days. Take a good look at yourself while you're there. As for the rest of you...I know that most of you don't agree with what Nate said. What I don't know is why you all sat there silent. Perhaps someone will explain to me later - and it had better be a good explanation."

Raith stood, and even now he kept his scars concealed from as much of the room as possible. "Don't worry about it. None of it was new. I'll be on my way."

Yet all the magic of that voice was gone, however neutral he kept his expression.

I should have done it, Marina thought. I should have stood up and defended you. But I just sat there, dumb, stupid. I don't know why. I should have said something.

"So had I," she said softly, and moved to stand by him. She couldn't do much, but she could shield him a little from those interested, frank stares. Some hostile, and too many fearful, but all unwanted. "It's getting late."

And it was too late to fix the damage that had been done to Raith, she thought sadly. He kept his head down as they walked, and he slid into the shadows as if he wanted to vanish in them.

All this had been her fault. If she'd not been snared by that boy's eyes, if she had just looked down - if, if, oh, a thousand things she should have done.

He did that for me.

Quietly, she took his hand as they walked out of the dining room, and felt his grip tighten on hers, but never saw the strange look in his eyes.

X - X - X - X - X

I am become death, destroyer of worlds.

How she shone in the night as she glided through the darkened streets with her eyes vague and devout. Wonderful visions filled her, candy dreams of how it would feel to be warm and living. Sally dreamt of that moment when life would fill her up like soda, fizzing in her nerve endings and spiralling her into the flashy, unruly world.

I am become life, and I will never need to destroy. The grass will grow strong under my feet, and there will be no bones hidden beneath it.

There would be one last offering, and this time she would find the secret boiling in Marina. The world that had been barred to her would be flung wide open, and she would be welcomed. No longer would she the secret leper among her own; she would walk tall, and beautiful - at last, the jagged ugliness would be scrubbed from her, and she would step out new and sparkling.

They will stop to admire me, but they will see more than the roll of my hips and the rise of my breasts - I will pass them by, and they will fall to their knees. Fall to their knees and weep, for the goddess has passed, and left her very memory as a blessing.

The air was fresh in her chest, and her face was truly astounding to gaze upon in that moment. The goddess treading mortal paths, confident in the knowledge that she would be forever wondrous, her mystery never to dwindle in the creases of age. Her limbs would never weaken and shatter, her body would not bow down beneath the weight of the years.

My dreams will haunt me no longer. I will not be left to look in upon a world that is faded and dim, for I will be within it - I will be the answer to its mysteries, and it will never know another like me.

She was on her own street now, and if anyone had been peering from the intricate lace curtains that lined almost every window, they would have snapped them shut with tightened lips.

Sally returned to her home not as a predator, but as prey. This was no hunt, but an ending to all she had been, an end to slaughter and searching. Instead, she walked without shame in human skin, a pale mist in the concealing shadows.

Here was Marina's house. So many times she had crossed that threshold, and been an alien intruder in the spacious, snug house. There had been evenings when Marina's mother had made them cakes and carefully helped the girls to dye their hair a scandalous shade of red. Times spent watching TV, and chomping happily on popcorn, lifts in the mud-spattered BMW parked on the drive with Marina's father studiously obeying the speed limits, however late it made them.

All those years, lived as if she was kept in a crystal cage, seeing the tight ties of Marina and her parents, and wanting them for her own. Wanting Marina's life.

And wasn't it gloriously ironic that Rina had wanted hers?

Sally remembered the rare moment when that secret had slipped out; Rina, with tissues crumpled about her and her nose raw from crying over another boy who had turned her down for Sally. Rina, sighing wistfully as Sally bought the clothes that only looked good in the pictures - and on a svelte, stunning werewolf. Walking unnoticed by Sally's side as boys wolf-whistled, and cat-called, and bayed for her as brightly as the hunter's did under the pale pocked moon.

Have it, she thought carelessly, tugging at her masses of silky hair until it hurt her scalp, stamping her feet with each step now. Have my face and you can have my hell with it.

Yes, Marina was never satisfied with what she had.

In a very quiet, yet strangely obvious way, she never seemed to have enough. How could she not see the wonder of her life? Her family sheltered her in their arms - they did not thrust her out into the cold night to face it alone. In her face there was a genuine compassion that made boys who were smart enough to see look twice - but she wanted the beautiful ones, the ones who trampled roughshod over the world with reckless confidence in their own charm, like Kav.

Sally had seen the way Marina had watched the wildcat when he first appeared with his cheeky grin, and purring - if crude - comments.

Sally had seen the way some of those boys trailed their startled eyes after Marina - as if they couldn't quite understand what they saw, only that it was unusual, and it was enough to spur them to ask for more than friendship. Some only looked, of course, but some - the bold ones - would ask too, and be refused because Rina wanted boys like Sally had.

She was levering open the window with sure hands, and sliding herself into the room she knew so well. Pretty pastels combined with stark and shocking red, black, silver that slashed over the walls in paintings and ribbon.

Rina wanted Sally's lies.

It made Marina miserable. That had shocked the werewolf. She could understand a little envy - she knew that to be lovely was to put flecks of monster-green in almost everyone's eyes, but she didn't want Marina to cry because she was not striking, not inhumanly startling, not cold as the heart of winter.

If Marina was miserable, Sally would take away her misery.

It would be a kindness. No more tears drenching the nights, no more stinging jealousies, no more confessions of how terrible a friend she was, being so jealous... No more Marina, except kept safe and bright in Sally's memories.

And all that wonderful heat would pour into her, be consumed by her, and there would be no more unhappiness where walked the goddess.

I am become life - I am the desire of every heart.

Yet how treacherous the thought that crawled snake-like into her mind as she sat composed upon the bed with her clean hands waiting for the stains of murder.

My own heart most of all.

X - X - X - X - X

They walked in silence until they came to the anteroom where her coat was draped carelessly over the chair. Marina couldn't even remember taking it off; the whole night was a dizzy swirl.

Releasing his hand was a loss; a small one, a curious one too. It had felt natural in an unnatural world.

Stupid, she chided herself. You're just trying to avoid thinking about everything else.

Yes. The other things that had happened tonight. Marina cast a quick glance at Raith and promptly kicked shut the door.

His shoulders drooped like wilted flowers. But she had caught him staring at her in a sideways, furtive way before dropping his eyes. Too late; she had glimpsed it. Shame. He was ashamed to be seen now.

All over again, she was angry. At the people out there, blasting him with their eerie beauty, and their icy fear. At herself, for doing nothing. And at him for letting them make him unworthy, for letting them see he believed himself grotesque. For ducking his head, and hiding himself in shadows.

"Don't listen to him." The words burst out of her like the stutter of gunfire, ferocious and quick. "That boy was a moron. A complete trademarked and polystyrene-packaged village idiot. You aren't a monster - I know that."

He stared up, pale-skinned and guarded. "Don't be so sure."

Before she could even think what she was doing, Marina shoved him. Startled, he fell back onto the wide sofa.

"Get over it!" she snapped out, though most of her fury wasn't aimed at him. "Don't let those excuses for people beat you - if they don't like how you look, so what? Just don't let them make you the villain in the piece because you aren't as pretty as them. You know what? I saw a monster tonight, Raith, and it wasn't you. It won't ever be you."

"Marina," he murmured. Those lime-green eyes were confused - she saw, this close, that little thorns of dark green and brown invaded them at the edges, but at their centre the blinding colour was sharp against the inky pupil.

A quizzical expression on his face, and he took her hand again but this time to turn it over and run fingers light as dust over her veins, pulling her down to sit by him. His head was bowed, so she could see only the faultless side and it tore at her. It made her sad to know that the rest of the world saw only the ruin.

"What are you doing?"

He glanced up, and there was a tickling mischief in his eyes that stirred warmth up in her stomach. "Checking you really are human," he said ruefully. "I was told once that angels and demons have no lines on their bodies. Good is kept young by purity, and evil makes enough money to hire a damn good surgeon. Which do you think you are, Marina?"

"It's just Rina," she offered, a bit timidly, feeling guilty at her outburst. It had to be said, but she could have said it a little less...loudly. "I'm not a place where you moor boats."

His mouth curved up ever so slightly, enough to show the barest white gleam of teeth. "You seem like shelter to me."

She laughed, pretending it had been a joke, but knew he had been saying something beyond what she had heard, even if exactly what it was eluded her still. "Me? I'm no angel."

"A demon, then?" Half-teasing, and he sat back to frown at her, his scarred flesh crooking his features. "It wouldn't be the first time, you know. People have fooled me before now."

"I...don't understand," Marina said hesitantly. There was a profound, crude pain in his eyes, and it made her uneasy. It might have been better if she could comfort him, but she didn't even know what was wrong.

"You wouldn't," he said with a little lift of one shoulder. "The Nightworld is a hard place, Rina. Beautiful, but harder than diamond, and quicker to cut you. We've had to be that way; it's engrained in us from the moment we are born, or made, and our fear keeps it true."

She did recognise the look on his face then. "Fear of...us?"

"Of you," he confirmed softly. "Humans envy us. They can't help but - we're stunning. Mostly, anyway. We're stronger, more dangerous and often more ruthless. The smallest child embraces the darkness within itself, where humans thrust it away and fight it back with technology, with light. The human world is so much brighter now, and it makes it hard for us to huddle in the shadows. Hiding was so easy when I was young..."

Young? She looked at him, a little taller than herself, with a boy's leggy, unfinished build that was only sinewy muscle, and not the bulk he would have in maturity. "When you were young?" she repeated, feeling like a parrot with its glorious plumage dimmed.

"Vampires like me - the kind who are made - never age." He squeezed shut his eyes. "Blessing or curse...I still don't know. There's still so much I don't know, even after all this time."

She opened her mouth to speak, and he brushed her lips with a hand that was not entirely steady. With anyone else, it would be too intimate a gesture, but with Raith, it seemed only natural. Strange, now she thought back, there had been almost no formality between them. Meeting him had been...

Easy.

In a girl who found herself shy under the fear that she would not be smart enough, pretty enough, funny enough for those she met, she had found a simple, innate bond with him. Marina didn't have many close friends, but she shared that same connection with Kav and Sally, with her mother. It was looking into someone's eyes and seeing your own thoughts reflected back, clear as sunlight glancing from still waters.

"One hundred and fifty," he said simply. "Or near enough."

Silence, as Marina groped for words that would fit this ridiculous yet real situation. She believed him, but it was near-impossible to wrap her mind around it. He should be grey-haired, wrinkled - sinking into his breaking body like a tortoise in its shell, but instead he sat whole, if not flawless, in front of her.

"You look really good for your age," she said finally. "I'm sorry, but that's just...insane."

"Tell me about it," he agreed, and that impish glitter flashed bright in his face for a moment. "Do you know how long I had to wait before they invented Just For Men so I could hide my grey hairs?"

She laughed, and punched him lightly on the shoulder.

And when she looked at Raith again, he was still, and that perplexed, forlorn air had returned.

"That's what I mean," he said quite softly. "People only ever treat me like a person for one reason, Marina. People are only kind when they want something from me, then they can afford to spare me a little pity, throw a few words to the cripple."

How raw his words, roughened by the anger in his voice. "Someone did that, didn't they?"

"Yes." He moved back into the corner of the couch and drew one knee up between them. "Yes, she did. It must have been oh, when the century turned. I'd been on my own for decades then, always moving because people were more honest about pointing out the monsters then. She came back to me then - the woman who made me, she came back one night."

She wanted to draw his clasped hands from his leg, and take them in her own in the faint hope it would ease the baffled, lost look flickering on his face. But she didn't. Too afraid, too scared of those powerful, old emotions that her snug human world had never been stirred by.

His voice was nearly a whisper, and she had to lean close to catch it; the green of his eyes was clover-soft, filled with the rushing of time moving by him as he drew back into the past. "I'd taken sanctuary in a church on All Hallows. It was so beautiful that night, lit with candles that threw all these wvaering liquid shadows everywhere, so silent I thought my own heartbeat might shake the foundations down. Heaven was close enough to touch that night, closer than it had been in fifty years."

His face was exposed then, the memory carrying his every thought to her; he was naked before her, and the sheer intensity of it held Marina transfixed.

"And then she came."

He turned his head away sharply, as if he couldn't bear to see the ghosts that walked his mind faint-footed.

"She'd been beautiful the night she made me, and monstrous too, with her mouth all smeared in red, so red it looked like she'd been drowning in berries, and her eyes the same strange silver as the moon. But when she came back, fifty years on, she was beautiful still, but she was different - more distant, maybe colder. I loved her all the same though, in a way I can't explain."

"Try," she said hoarsely.

He scraped his fingers through the hair that was the unusual dark colour of burgundy, of port, and in that frustrated, helpless gesture, Marina thought she could drink him up right then and still be thirsty. She wanted to smooth away the lines from his forehead, and nearly reached out to before stopping herself.

"I adored her," he said slowly. "She was a goddess to me when she approached me on the road home the first time, when I was human. Mesmerizing - I was spellbound with one look from her. I forgot everything that meant anything to me, even the girl I loved for a short time. That goddess took me into her arms, and she took my blood and all the frailty of my human life, and poured the night itself back into my throat. I felt she had given me the key to everything that was strong and secret and startling in the world - how many times had I wished to be more than I was, how many times had I felt useless and blind to what went on around me? And suddenly...I understood people."

The surprise was still painted on his face - pulling smooth the long sprawl of scar tissue, widening his eyes so the colour blasted her.

"I saw why they were so afraid, so quick to point and scream - how could they not when they saw only a huge dark void surrounding them? Poor things, they couldn't look into the shadows and see rainbows like I. She taught me to hunt, she showed me how breakable all people were and how you had to be so gentle with them, and only leave behind joy, so when they shut their eyes to pray in church, though they would never remember, it would be you prayed for, and you they dreamed of. She taught me what I needed, and then she left me to make my own way in the world, until she walked into the church that night"

He rubbed at the scars.

"No one dreams of me now," he said sadly, and the sigh snaked through his whole body.

But I do, Marina thought. Light had broken into her world, and it was cast in a bewitching green that was luck run out, luck made new and fresh if only he'd see. I don't know why I do, but out of all the beautiful shining creatures who has tried to explain to me tonight, it's you, the ruined one, who shows me the true brilliance of your world.

"And that night, while I was sat in front of the altar, just watching all those candles dance and seeing my own salvation growing in them, she returned."

His hands clutched tighter about his leg, drawing his body in on itself. And she reacted without thought, because she couldn't bear to see the wonder in him disappear.

Her hands closed around his, and locked them together. "Don't let her," she said. "Whoever she is, don't let her."

It was pure selfishness, that gesture. If he was lost under memories of some other woman, the she-devil, Marina was afraid she wouldn't see his eyes light in that stinging, appealing way, and he wouldn't ever gift her that crooked little smile, and he'd fall back into the shadows, hiding under his ruined face, letting that be the reason the world kept away from him. It had happened earlier, so smoothly she'd nearly missed it.

She didn't want that to happen again.

Raith stared at their joined hands, and a gentle flush crept over the one unscarred cheekbone.

"She was still beautiful," he continued as if he'd never stopped, bar for a rolling, shivery huskiness in his voice. "It made my heart ache just to see her, tall and silent in the guttering golden flames that pooled shadow around her feet and eyes - eyes like the ocean for any fool to drown in - and made her hair shine like silver cloth. Oh, yes, if you'd been there, you would have fallen on your knees too, and blessed her for simply being."

His grip tightened until Marina could hardly feel her fingers except for tingling little pains. "All she did was tilt up my face, and tell me how beautiful I was. But after fifty years of being ugly and hideous to every other eye, that was all it took for me to love her again."

"What went wrong?" she said, confused.

He let go of her hands, and rubbed at the scars tiredly. "What went wrong? To be truthful, what had gone wrong began the night the fire ate me. It burned me - but it killed the girl I loved. You see, I came home to find her house on fire, people trying to beat it out at the edges but anyone could see nothing short of a tidal wave was going to put it out. Then..." He swallowed, and the sound seemed ear-splitting in the hush. "They told me she was still in there. We were betrothed - we had been for years - and I even turned down my creator for her - turned down the goddess for just a girl."

It sounded as if he quoted someone, but the words meant nothing to Marina.

"I went mad," Raith continued softly. "They tried to hold me back, to stop me from going in, but they couldn't. I ran into the house, into the smoke and the heat and the fire to find her."

"Was she so special, then?"

He paused. "Special?" Goosebumps prickled on her skin at his bitter, husky laugh. "My girl wouldn't have made Michelangelo run for his paintbrushes, and she wouldn't have awed Marx with her philosophical ideals...but I ran through flames for her. She was everything to me - and I failed her." He shuddered, his hands twisting, rubbing at the scar tissue over and over. "The smoke suffocated her. Not a mark on her, god, not a mark - but she was dead all the same."

"Fires happen," she commented, not liking the rawness that churned in his eyes. "How could you fail her? It wasn't your fault."

He stilled, every motion sliding from him until he was still and patient as a statue waiting out eternity. "In a way, it was. The vampire who made me set the fire because I spurned her for a human. But she never intended for me to rush like a lunatic into the inferno: I was supposed to return, and find my girl ashes. Maybe she'd pretend grief and comfort for a while, and eventually I would choose immortal life with her, two hunters together. She'd wanted a companion, you see - a beautiful toy to spend forever with."

A sigh, light as butterflies wings.

"Forever's a very long time to be alone, you see." He managed to say it almost nonchalantly, but there was nothing casual in his taut muscles, bunched at his arms and shoulders.

Any time alone is too long, Marina thought, but held her peace.

"I never knew this until much later - years after my maker reappeared in the church. I stayed with her for half a century before she finally...confessed. I lived fifty years alone, and fifty more as a toy, her catspaw. Until at last, the truth came out, when I saw her with...something that belonged to my betrothed. I...left."

Marina couldn't have said why, but she felt he was holding back. No - she felt he was lying. Something was missing from his words.

But she didn't press him. She couldn't.

"She used me," he said bitterly. "Every day I spent with her, she punished me for not choosing her. I became nothing but her slave, but I thought I loved her in a pathetic, grateful way. Every place we lived, she'd hang mirrors everywhere so I would see myself day after day. Candles in every nook, so I'd smell the smoke and remember my girl dying. Penance, she called it, for folly. It pleased her to keep me around; a shabby reminder of what happened to those who disappointed her. Until at last, I realised. But she used me like no one else ever has."

"That was one person," Marina pointed out. "One. You can't live in the past. It just doesn't work."

A vivid, startled smile flickered on his face. "My girl used to say that, too. She never liked to reminisce - she always looked forward. Always saw the best." He blinked, as if he'd surprised himself. "I haven't talked about her to anyone in...forever. You remind me of her, you know."

"Me?"

A solemn nod. "You. But you're different too. She'd never have stood up to me. She was very gentle, too gentle to survive. I get the feeling there's a kick-ass bitch in you just waiting to get out."

"Wow, thanks," she said dryly and was glad to see his face lighten. "And on behalf of my inner devil woman, may I say that next time you ever let them make you less than you are...I'm going to open a can of whoop-ass on the lot of you."

He laughed, and there was no bitterness to this sound, only pleasure that made it music. "Next time?"

She met his eyes almost bashfully, letting him see the unexpected desire she felt. Letting the warmth shine out from her eyes like melting chocolate. "I'd like there to be one."

The words hung in the air, and hovered like a hummingbird.

"Don't say things like that," he said quietly, and even though he smiled, there was sorrow in it. "Don't say what you can't mean. Don't tie yourself to the monsters, Marina. You'll only see ugliness after a while."

She wanted to protest, but abruptly he stood, and she knew the conversation was over. Later she promised herself. I'll make him see later.

X - X - X - X - X

They were met at the door by Kav, shifting from foot to foot. There was a worried twist to his mouth, and he had a grip on Vanya's arm like he was restraining the werewolf. From what, she wondered.

"Hey." The wildcat smiled tentatively. "Rina...I just wanted to catch you before you left. So did Van."

Vanya looked like the only thing she wanted to catch was Marina's throat in her hands. There was more than a hint of hostility in the flat, narrow glare she gave Marina, and the twitch in her cheek when she looked at Raith..

"Nate was out of order." Kav was fiddling with the brown cord around his neck. "Way out of order. I just wanted to say sorry. We should have slapped him down."

Raith just shrugged. "Don't worry about it. I wasn't expecting the cavalry to turn up."

"I won't," put in Vanya with a tight grin that showed the sheen of teeth.

"No," insisted the wildcat. "It needs saying." Kav took a deep breath. "I'm not going to pretend I'm comfortable being around you, Raith. Man...I look at you, I see what could have happened to me if Neo hadn't dug me out of gang life. I see what I might look like if I get on the wrong end of some silver nitrate. You've got to understand - for a lot of us, our looks are the only possession we've ever had that hasn't been stolen or broken. Without it, we'd just be begging on the streets. But I'm sorry. I truly am."

The words were addressed to the vampire, but it was her he looked at it. The tawny eyes were earnest and almost vulnerable. It was then that Marina realised how much her friendship really did mean to Kav, however casually he acted.

And she didn't want to lose that.

"It's okay, Kav," she said gently. "I freaked out when I saw you. I guess it's just...something you have to get used to."

A distinct snort came from Vanya's direction. The three of them studiously ignored, though Kav's foot did happen to stamp down suddenly.

"Look...Rina..." Kav paused, and cleared his throat, "Thanks."

"Kav," she said wearily and with just a hint of irritation. "Stop thanking me! You're really starting to annoy me."

"But you don't understand-"

Marina gave him her sternest look, and he pretended to quail behind his hands before peeking out childlike from between his fingers. It was hopelessly cute, and utterly manipulative. "Kaffir Lybica, pack it in, or I'll slap you from here to Sunday!"

"She knows how to handle you, Lybica," remarked Vanya with a baring of her white, neat teeth.

A succulent, feline smile rolled right on to Kav's mouth in a way she knew far too well. "Hell, yes."

"As if," she cut in, ruffling Kav's hair like she would a cat's - and for a moment, she was certain he was going to demand she scratch his chin - until he ducked away, smoothing his hair down with mock-indignant gestures. "He's got a thing for loudmouthed redheads."

The barbed comment just slipped out, and she saw Kav's eyebrows arch fractionally. Vanya just really hit the wrong note with her. She was so stubborn, so sure she was right, so-

"You too are far too alike," commented Raith from where he sat on the low brick wall lining the path to the porch, and if Marina shut her eyes, his voice spun enchantment around her like a diamond spider; she felt almost dizzy, almost lovesick.

Then his words sunk in.

"I'm nothing like her!"

Vanya crossed her arms over her chest, and there was a simmering challenge in her face. "Nothing like a monster, huh? God, you're all the same. I've seen dozens of you human girls find out about us, and it's always like this. You're okay with the hot guys like Kav-"

"I'm hot?" the startled wildcat said, and began to grin in a way that could only be described as rakish. "Well, it's about time-"

"Shut up, Lybica," the redhead ordered with a flick of her fingers at him. "Yeah, you're okay with the cute ones, 'cause hey, there's kudos in being seen with a fine guy and no one needs to know that when you say he's just a big pussycat, you aren't kidding."

"Don't mind me," said Kav loudly. "I'm only standing right here-"

"And who cares if it isn't so much hearts and flowers as hearts, lungs and livers on your carpet in the morning? He's attractive, he's nice eye-candy, that's what counts-"

"Do you mind?" There was a definite soprano hint to Kav's voice now, and his eyes were starting to narrow in that measured, dangerous way that meant his slow-burning temper was getting very close to igniting. "I suppose you'll start speculating on my pedigree next."

Marina studiously ignored him, fixing her eyes on Vanya's furious, animated face. The anger was curling up in her fingers and toes like water bubbling and spitting, angry at the harshness of those words, because even if they held a grain of truth - even if there had been a time she'd wanted Kav in a way that had very little to do with friendship, and a lot to do with status, that time was gone. Angry at the unfairness, angry with herself because there had been a moment when she had thought them monsters.

"You-" she started, but got no further before Vanya overrode her, sweeping her arm with the sharpness of a Fate cutting short someone's life.

"No, you can damn well listen!" There was hurt under those words too - some part of Marina heard it, and noted it, and then just as quickly ignored it. "And I don't know what you're doing with that vampire, is he your charity case for the week?"

Horrified at the werewolf's words, Marina stared at Raith. Oh no, that wasn't true. She didn't want him to think that - no, it hadn't been out of pity but out of...of...

"No!" she burst out, riding roughshod over whatever Vanya began to say. "That isn't true."

Raith just shrugged from where he stood, his head leaned so tiredly against the red brickwork, nothing she could read on those marred features. There was only sadness in his smile, no bitterness at all - but she realised that was indeed what he thought. Even now, he still doubted. "Isn't that why?"

"God, how can you say that?" she demanded. Her attention was all on Raith, on the cool, flat belief that was clover leaves in his eyes, and the lopsided curl of his mouth. The strangest, wildest thought came to her.

How beautiful he looked stood there, with the shadows fitting to his body like caring hands, with the failing light throwing his face into illumination so she could see every piece of destruction the flames had wreaked - he should have been grotesque, it should have sent shudders down her and yet she could only gaze at him in the sunset and see the humanity that she had missed so many times tonight in those who stood whole and stunning before her.

"How can I not?" he answered simply. He stepped forward, so the light from the hallway shone on him in Farbrook's spacious porch. "Look at me! God help me, just look!"

She had never shifted from him, and she didn't now. "I am looking."

"Then why don't you see it?" he shouted, and his voice whipped out like a stone from a slingshot, the words hitting her hard. Pain leapt in his eyes with bright, livid swiftness. "Why can't I see it in your face? Why don't you hate me?"

What? What on earth did she have to hate him for?

"For being this way," he answered, reading her mind - lord above, plucking her thoughts out just like that, spreading his hands to frame his face as if he showed her some crime, some horror. "They see it."

Kav's face was frozen, his smile a contortion that did nothing to hide his fear and...she saw it now, just as Raith said - revulsion, an inherent horror of the flawed, the unsightly. It glowed just as clearly in Vanya, who had withered like a husk under those unutterably true and cruel words. What was it that made them so?

He had been hurt terribly. And yes, she knew he would never have the natural, flowing lines of Kav, he would never be whole and perfect and unblemished but how could they not see the way his hands trembled silently at his sides, how could they not know that his face was the exact replica of theirs, back in that hospital?

"But I don't," she told him, wanting him to believe her, wanting him to see that it didn't matter - that this strange, secretive boy had reached inside her and woken a depth of feeling she wouldn't have thought possible for a stranger. "I just don't. Why won't you believe me?"

"How could you be so afraid of me?" came the near-reverent voice of Kav, a little husky and hurt. "You're not afraid of him."

She swallowed hard. "You don't know how scary you can be, Kav. People aren't afraid of you because you're a criminal. They're afraid because you think you're better than them. You think you should be treated better and maybe you resent that you aren't. Underneath, you all think a little bit like Nate. You probably don't mean to, but it's still there."

Marina turned to Vanya. "And I don't like you because you're not six feet tall with rippling muscles and the face of Adonis. I don't like you because you're just plain mean. And I've had enough of all of you."

"Rina..." She didn't know whose voice it was, and she didn't much care. A headache had set up home in her temples, pounding like a war drum, and she knew if she didn't leave now, words would slip from her that she didn't really mean, and shouldn't really say.

Turning sharply on her heel, Marina strode out of Farbrook, out of this small slice of the Nightworld and into the cool darkness of the human night. Back into oblivion.

She wasn't thinking at all of lime-green eyes and a rippling laugh.

_To me, you're strange and you're beautiful  
You'd be so perfect with me but you just  
Can't see - you turn every head but you don't  
See me._

X - X - X - X - X

Thanks for reading - love, love to hear your thoughts!

Thank-yous and answers: 

**Debbi**:grin: yeah, briefly I was doing well with the updates...curse this working seven days a wekk lark... Sally turned about to be an interesting character - everything is a little bit on its head in this one, and it makes it very fun to write - I didn't realise it when I started writing it, but I guess this story is kind of based around stereotypes.

Let's face it...if Marina is all that's standing between her and eternal happiness...bada-bing,bada-boom to coin a phrase. :grin: I just had the mental picture of Kav being a big cat. And owning two of the blessed beasties, far, far too many images sprang to mind. That scene won.

It ain't soon, but it is an update... - close enough? Thanks everso!

**Oli: **I wouldn't want to try petting a shark or a tiger though...you might not get your hand back. The place in question is St Neots, which is a small village/market town close to Cambridge. It's a very pretty place (typically quaint and picturesque.) Thanking you much!

**Daugain: **I get very bored when characters are what they seem (this is the problem when you have the attention span of fruit-fly-goldfish offspring.) I enjoyed writing her POV - I can get some real unleashing of the Dark Side in! Ah the day of burning...poor, idiot boy. :dry grin: I'm very glad it's worth waiting for, as waiting inevitably seems involved! Many thanks.

**Silent Luscinia:**:grin: Thank you muchly! I'm enjoying Strange Lull because it's nowhere near as madly tangled as Chim, and oh, just about every other story I've ever written! Hidden? Moi? Ma chere, would I do such a thing?...well...yeah... :innocent look: But hey, all will be revealed! Sorry about the wait between updates. I got your email about your addy change :grin: All done and dusted, ta very much!

**Jo: **Yep, I sent it out to T-Tales yonks ago. My new aim is to send all the story parts out at the same time, to avoid mass bafflement. It really will only be four parts, but it's kind of trialling for a story set in the UK around the Farbrook centre. I'm getting the feel of it :o) Basically, the first full story would be set around Kheo, who was the dragon king when the wars began - you'll find out why he doesn't feature in Chimera. And ooh, you are now storified :) I am never too busy for fun! Merci beaucoup!

**Phire Phoenix: **Neo is Jepar's uncle, who Jepar used to stay with in the summer - so Jepar would probably know Vanya/Kav and the like. It's the same timeline, though this story takes place before the events in Chimera, probably around late 2000... I think all my stories are related. (It's turned into a kind of spot-the-link game for me.) Characters crop up from all over. Avirl Lavigne - I love her songs, and that one especially. Thanks everso!

**Katherine:** I am writing pretty much all the time (so many new story ideas it makes me want to cry.) It's just writing anything consistently! Current ideas involve the series following FoF about the grown-up sisters/brothers of the FoF characters (currently involving a strange sideline where Jepar is a gym teacher...), the series springing from Strange Lull, odd one-offs, Blue's early years, FoF's early years...god...too much! Need more time. I will try and keep this frequent now. Grazie!

**Izzy:** Kav, bless him, got to have some character development before this story. He's so fun to write I'm tempted to give him a story all of his own (hey, another to add to he collection of waiting-to-be-writtens...). Sally is spooky, but great to write because she's got such a slanted take on the world. Not that I'm advocating eating your boyfriends, mind...not without ketchup, at any rate. Thank you!

**Megami-sama:** Luckily, Sally's creepiness was intended (how very worrying if it wasn't!) Where the necklace comes or came from is hinted at in this part though it won't be properly explained until the final part. Hyperness is good. Hyperness is better than lethargy, my main stumbling block! Cheers!

**Dianna:** Sometimes the perfect line just appears - I love it when that happens. Why doesn't it happen more often? And he's strokably smooth too... Sally couldn't have been nice. No one can be that perfect - not in my dang world! My thanks.

**Cacat-Angel:** Hello! This is very different from the kind of story I usually write (as you probably know from the web that is Chim, and thanks for the reviews there too!) but a good change for me. I have to admit, Chimera is confusing if you've not read a couple of the background stories. I did try to avoid that, but in one or two places, it was unavoidable. No SL has got just about all the characters it's going to get. Too many in a short just don't work (been there, made that mistake.)

Marina is les developed than the rest; probably because so much of it is seen through her eyes, and the characters are developed by her. She's fun to write because she isn't a kick-ass 'die bitch die' type of character. She's never going pull a Buffy on anyone; she is just an ordinary girl. It makes her difficult to write in a way because she's quite understated but also a refreshing challenge.

I do always finish my stories, however long it takes. (Most non-updated goes to a Tamora Pierce fic I have hanging around on this site somewhere; it's been well over a year since the last update.) Thank you for the long and thorough review - it's much enjoyed!


	5. Chapter Four

Well, never let it be said I don't finish what I start:) Long overdue but at last finished, this short something which was last updated (embarassingly) in March '03. My humble apologies for the long time between parts.

Thank you to those who commented last time round; to Debbi, Shadow, Kris, Dulce Ambrosia, Nokomiss, Bex, MerryD, girltype, Dianna, K'Ranna, Bikifriend, quiet liban, galli-vi, CalliopeMused and last but not least, Amy.

Feedback is very much adored and appreciated; I'd love to hear anything you have to say, be it good, bad or ugly. Lyrics belong to the luscious Tom McRae, who is amazing.

**Dedication:** For Ivory, who remembered.

I hope you enjoy reading,  
Ki

**Strange Lullaby Part Four**

_She lies still  
Her eyes on fire  
Undressed to kill  
And untethered in time_

Breath by breath, Sally Lupin shredded their friendship, methodical as a coroner picking over the leavings of death. She counted Marina's flaws over and over, each time exaggerating them a little more, increments of lies, until it seemed mercy to take such a life.

Envy: green and lurid, Marina was never good at hiding it. She wanted the simple admiration of men, to have eyes trace the curves of her body and follow the sway of her hips – she was blessed in her ordinariness, and didn't even realise what a gift it was.

Blindness. The years had swung by, and Marina still could not see the dark glory of her companions. She walked with a wolf and a cat who wore human form as casually as humans wore coats, yet saw nothing of the predator in them. Even when the moon was wide and white, and Sally felt the wolf bursting from her eyes, Marina had been oblivious. She would never survive the real world – if she could not see the inhumanity in the inhuman, how could she ever hope to recognise the inhumanity in what truly was human?

Weakness. She was human and soft, dealing in words, not actions. She could talk a good fight, but she would rip like crepe paper under the claws of a wolf. No matter how you looked at it, she was inferior, and it was inevitable that someone more powerful would beat and break her eventually. Sally was only saving her from that fate.

Instead, Marina would die under the hands of a goddess, in a sacrifice as sweet and shadowed as the foxgloves that grew thick in the hedgerows, and the best part of her would live. That tender, rich soul would live on, gleaming in the wild, brilliant eyes of a wolf, throwing back the hallowed moon in the darkness, lifted from obscurity into glory, savagery, beauty.

Sat there, shrouded in self-conferred holiness, Sally was unable to see what other, older eyes would have seen.

Beneath her peach and coral skin, a monster huddled.

X - X - X - X - X

For a few moments as Marina left, all three of them stared after her retreating form. The night absorbed her, until nothing remained of her but the fading sound of her footsteps. It seemed a confirmation of his private suspicion: that the Nightworld and humans could not coexist in peace. Humanity would always deny them, refute them and inevitably run from them.

But not, Raith thought, because she feared them. He'd seen fear in her eyes earlier, and it probably still clung to her, pernicious as acid, but that hadn't been why she left. That hadn't sparked her ferocity.

Nor did she lust for the dark splendour of immortality. He'd never believed that one himself – decades as a pariah had convinced him otherwise - but he'd heard others say it.

There could be no excuses: it was they who had failed, they who had driven her away because they were petty and cruel and frightened.

And I am just as guilty. She wanted to know me, and I was too afraid of what I am and what I will become, afraid she truly would see me as hideous, deformed in soul as in body.

Maybe I am. I just don't know – I only know that I must search, and I must find my soulmate. There is nothing more to it than that.

"Rina!" shouted the shapeshifter, jolting Raith from his thoughts. "Rina, come back..."

His voice died, and the silence seeped in around them, thick as fog. Kaffir's cockiness had withered away, leaving only a tense, bewildered young man.

Raith knew what came next, and he prepared himself for the onslaught-

But when Kaffir did turn with the viciousness of a snake, he was not the target.

"You poisonous bitch!" Kav shouted at Vanya. "Why did you say that to her, huh, why'd you do something so stupid?"

She gawped, and then a flush marched up her face – Raith could smell it, the odour of heat and fear and anger, rank as rotting fruit. "I'm the stupid one? Me? Which one of us brought that scum in-"

"Don't talk about Rina like that!"

"I'll talk about her any way I want," she hissed, her lips drawn back, her face narrow and taut with loathing. "She knows about us, Kav, she knows. Don't you get it? You lied to her, you lied and lied and lied and now you've told her the truth, do you really think she's going to turn around and say, well, hey, you're all scary monsters and I'm your natural prey, but let's be friends! I. Don't. Think. So."

"Well, you wouldn't, would you? It's not as if you've got any friends."

Raith gazed from one furious face to the other. There was no point in hanging around. Sooner or later they'd remember him, and drag him into this mess. It was time to leave.

After all, he hadn't found her yet. The silver chain was still pooled in his pocket, proof she was here somewhere. Proof that he was needed once again.

Or he could chase Marina, and settle this nagging hope in his heart, to see if she had looked at him and seen more than scars – if that glimpse of affection in her mind had been real. God, he wanted it to be.

In all the years of his nomadic existence, he'd only met two other people who had looked at him and felt neither pity nor revulsion. An old man, down on the coast, who'd given him a lift into Portsmouth; he'd chattered away amiably, munching on toffee the whole way, and told Raith that life gave everyone tough breaks, and who gave a damn if his was a little more visible?

The other had been a child on Halloween, who'd whispered 'cool costume' when she was stood next to him in the shop. Her horrified mother had stammered apologies, but Raith had met those curious blue eyes and found himself saying, "Nah. I think yours is better." Against the turmoil of her mother's mind, the girl had been soothing as sunset, beaming up at him from her witch's outfit.

And now Marina. No, he couldn't let her go, not like this, wondering forever if they could have been friends, or they could have been more, if she could change everything. Duty and destiny just weren't enough. He hungered for more, for her sweetness and her flashes of temper, for her carefree passion; for all the things he lacked in himself.

Decided, he began to edge away from the argument which had gone from semi-lucid exchanges to insults with alarming rapidity.

"You...you..." Vanya sputtered and searched and finally spat out the words like bullets. "You fucking wanker!"

"Classy, very classy," sneered the shapeshifter. "About what I'd expect from a hooker's daughter."

As he melted into the shadows, their voices followed him, sharp and high on the air, rising to a cruel crescendo.

"Don't you bring my mother into this! Don't you dare, Kaffir Lybica, or I'll...I'll..."

"You'll, you'll?" parroted Kav. That was the last that Raith could make out clearly as he pursued Marina, the fading shrills of the Nightworld's blame and shame. All that was worst of it, he left behind.

And all that he wanted to be best...he followed, hoping.

X - X - X - X - X

Her shoes snapped on the pavement, the staccato beat puncturing her frenzied thoughts.

For all my dreams of worlds beyond, I never guessed at this.

In idle moments, Marina had wondered what it might be like if she found herself in some secret land – of course she had. But in her mind, it had been a place of adventure and easy gratification. The heroes were handsome and the monsters hideous; the dragons were slain, the villains definable and despicable. There were no blurred lines, no place where one might glimpse the grotesque in the smile of a friend or see salvation in a stranger's eyes.

The brisk night made her walk faster, but she could not outrun her emotions, tumbling like rain.

How can it be true? How can they live unnoticed among us? Are they just that good at lying to us, or am I just too stupid to see it?

She felt as if she hardly knew Kav, as if all their moments of easy familiarity had been a sham, his lies covering them with the sleek taint of oil.

And Sally...

And Sally? A werewolf? No. Sally squealed if she got a spot of make-up on her top - how could she possibly streak through the woodland without caring about the mud and the bugs?

She could just about cope with Kav as a cat. There was something feline about him – about his ineffable smile and propensity to pounce on anything he considered should be his.

But Sally couldn't be a wolf. Wolves had hordes of fur and big teeth and they were everything her dizzy friend wasn't. She wore pink. She cried at sappy movies. She painted her nails, and unless there was a wolf loping around with shiny blue claws, Marina just couldn't reconcile the two.

Or perhaps she'd misunderstand what they were trying to tell her: of everything she'd seen tonight, the things that lingered were no marvels. No, it was the banal and the mundanely tragic that flashed through her mind again and again.

It was the look of hurt in Kav's face, it was Raith flinching back from sharp words, it was Vanya's rage, and it was even the blasé contempt of Nate. All those familiar emotions, and all of them born from fear and misunderstanding.

Maybe she was wrong to feel betrayed that they hadn't told her – maybe she should be relieved.

But part of her still thrummed with resentment; they should have trusted her – they shouldn't have left her blithe and blind to their twilight lives, which divided them like harlequins. All right, it would have been difficult for her to accept, but she would have done it, wouldn't she? And it would have been better than finding out like this, than being haunted by regret and confusion and anger, and the memory of wounded green eyes.

She couldn't stop thinking about it, them – him - and she wanted not to care, but she could do neither, so instead she stomped along the icy road, gritting her teeth against the cold. Her home wasn't far now, and then she could fall into undemanding, empty sleep with its alluring promise to forget for a little while.

Except she had the feeling she would dream of green eyes. Curse him.

X - X - X - X - X

There.

A key turning in the lock, almost drowned beneath the TV which was cranked up to deafening. Thrills shot up from Sally's stomach. This was it; her finest moment.

A brief clutter of human voices – Marina's parents making small talk, she brushing it off with murmurs of tiredness. Creak of the hall door, and then the soft insistent beat of Marina's feet on the stairs. Her perfume came before her, delicate, faint, a tantalising appetiser.

The anticipation spiralled up through her, and she had to fight not to change there and then, not to slide into her savage skin. But she wanted Rina to know, to understand how Sally would save her.

It wasn't death: no, it was an offer of immortality.

Her hands flexed, trying to become claws. But for one last time, she held her human shape, a welcoming smile bright on her face, and the hunger lurking in her eyes.

The door swung open.

X - X - X - X - X

What...?

Marina stopped, speechless, and all thoughts of infuriating men and mysterious societies were driven clean out of her head.

Sally was on her bed, naked. Very, very naked.

"What are you doing?" she squeaked. She shut the door, glancing about for Sally's clothes, but saw nothing. Where had she put them?

There was something weird about Sally's expression. When she spoke, her voice had a deep, dreamy quality that sounded as if she were drunk. Maybe she was. "Waiting for you."

"Sal, are you okay? Mum and Dad didn't say you were round."

Those baby blue eyes were almost drowned out by the dark pools of her pupils. Marina amended 'drunk' to 'drugged', though that seemed even less likely. Sally had always sneered at the boys who crowded round the back of the science labs, smoking with furtive haste.

"They don't know," she purred, easing into a full, languid stretch, and Marina averted her eyes hastily. There were some things she didn't want to see, and Sally was flashing most of them right now. "This is between you and me."

"What's between you and me?"

"There's something I need you to know."

Realisation struck. It was the Nightworld, it was just the stupid Nightworld and its secrets again. Kav had good as said that he and Sally had discussed telling her; maybe she'd been wrong to assume it had been an easy choice.

Now she looked, there seemed a strain to the way Sally sat, as if she were trying to hold back some immense emotion. Her shoulders quivered with it, while her hands gripped the duvet as if she would tear it apart.

And of course, a slightly less subtle sign of stress: she was sitting there drunk and naked on the bed.

"I know about the Nightworld," she blurted. "Kav told me. I know you're a...a..." God, it sounded daft. "...a werewolf."

But it didn't bring the rush of relief she'd hoped for. Sally only tilted her head, ever so slowly until she was staring at Marina from a grotesque angle, as if she had been hanged. Her hair twined around her neck like a flaxen rope, intensifying the illusion.

And Marina felt the first icy fingers of fear, brushing over her shoulders.

"You don't know the half of it," Sally whispered. A fell light gleamed in her eyes – the wild, unearthly green of the Northern Lights, as if the whole night sky shone out from her.

"Tell me, then," she urged so her fear would be banished, so she would see something in her best friend's face that she recognised.

"Terry was the first one," Sally said slowly.

Terry? The name was familiar. A blurry face waded into her memory – one of the boys who'd hung around longer than most. He'd been The One, but then they'd all been The One until boredom set in.

He'd been handsome, and like most of Sally's boys, he'd ignored Marina except when he was forced to make polite conversation. But she did remember that his eyes were a startling shade of green – a clear deep colour that jumped from his skin like a slap of summer. She'd asked if they were real, and he'd given her a surprised glance, as if a monkey had spoken.

"They're contacts," he'd admitted reluctantly. "But don't tell Sal. She likes them, and that's fine with me."

But she wasn't sure, so she only said, "Terry? That guy who ran away a couple of years ago?"

Sally's smile was brittle and knowing. "He didn't run away."

Marine felt her stomach lurch and she didn't know why. "Yeah, he did. His parents were on the local TV. They never found him."

"He didn't run away," Sally said patiently, as if she were a teacher with a slow student. "His parents thought he did, because I made them. We can do that, you know – play with your mind."

A flash of the doctor freezing in the doorway of the hospital, poised like a ballet dancer on the apex of action.

"I know," she whispered hoarsely. Dread was welling up in her body, pouring like mercury into her legs until she was transfixed. "Then where did he go?"

Sally seemed to glow, her face as radiant and lustrous as the Madonna, gazing into sacred spaces. Marina thought that she had never looked lovelier, her lips parted, her eyes wide and almost adoring. "I killed him," she said in a hushed, ecstatic breath. Her smile was so soft, so sweet that she might have been confessing to love and not murder.

Oh god. It was murder, wasn't it?

No. This isn't true. This can't be true.

She didn't know where the next words came from, but they sounded desperate. "No, you didn't. Oh my god, Sally, what are you saying?"

Incredibly, that was sympathy in Sally's expression. "I did, Rina. I had to."

"Did...did he attack you?" she said, clinging onto the only explanation that could make sense. "Was it self-defence?"

"Terry? No, he was harmless."

Mum and Dad are downstairs. If I can bring them up here...they can call the police. They can make this all stop. But if I leave, she'll know something's up. I need another way...

She didn't know she was stepping back until she felt the door against her spine. Only then did she feel the tight bunches of her shoulders, the nails digging into her palms. Only then did she realise how frightened she was.

I believe her. I truly do. "Then why?" she asked, not knowing what else to do.

All the serenity drained from Sally until she was a wraith with dark, lost eyes. Suddenly she was huddled on the bed, arms wrapped around her knees – and Marina had to stop herself from going over there to comfort her like she always did when Sally was left heartbroken after her latest One sauntered away.

"You don't know what it's like, Rina. How dark and empty it is. We play at being human, and we're so good at it that we can fool you all, but we're still on the outside. Some of us can even believe the pretence after a little while, like Kav. He talks about friends and family and love as if they're real."

"They are-"

"For you. Not for me." The anguish in her voice was awful to hear. "All those boys...I wanted to know what love was. I wanted to know why it mattered."

"What?"

"Anything!" Sally drew a ragged breath. "Why was everyone else happy? Why not me? There was nothing. Not love, not hate, not even anger. Just nothing. And then...and then when I was hunting one night, I came across this guy. A tramp, or some homeless guy. I don't know why he was in the woods, but he saw me, so I decided to scare him a little. I chased him...I chased him, and I was alive. And when I caught him, and when I had his throat in my jaws..." She shuddered, her head tipping back. "You have no idea how it felt."

Marina's heart was hammering so hard she could barely hear Sally. "Wh-what does this have to do with Terry?"

Her CD player was on the desk. She could flick it on – turn up the volume. If she could drown out the TV, that would bring her parents up. Nothing annoyed her father more. She began to edge towards it, away from the dubious safety of the door.

"It didn't last. By the time I got home, I was empty again. I didn't understand why, until I met Terry. I loved him, Rina, I really did, and when I was with him, I could hardly feel the emptiness." She paused, and when she spoke, there was a terrible poignancy to her words. "He made everything okay. He made it bearable."

Marina nodded, concentrating on moving closer to her stereo.

"I thought he'd understand what I was. I was going to make him like me, so he could show me how to be human and wolf. I'd never be lonely again." Her face hardened; the ruthlessness there was startling, a side of Sally that Marina had never glimpsed. "But he ran. He ran, so I caught him, and I tore out his throat with my teeth and it was even better than all the other times had been. He was human, and he loved me too – I saw it when he died, I felt it beating in his heart. It wasn't real love though, so it didn't keep me warm for long. It couldn't have been real love, or he wouldn't have run."

She was almost next to the desk. She just had to reach out, and flick the switch-

"He didn't love me like you do."

X - X - X - X - X

Raith lingered outside, debating whether he should ring the doorbell. He'd caught up with Marina a few minutes before she reached the house, but indecision and fear had kept him from showing himself. Instead he had trailed behind her, watching for any threat lurking in the gloom.

She was safe, back in her human world. He didn't belong there, grotesquerie that he was. He should leave her alone. It had been a dream, and even if she had welcomed him in-

And then her voice echoed in his head, strident and fierce.

"You know what? I saw a monster tonight, Raith, and it wasn't you. It won't ever be you."

And later, some miraculous later, he'd said half-shyly, "Next time?"

The look in her eyes had stolen his breath. "I'd like there to be one."

No. He wouldn't be a coward. He wouldn't let this lie. He'd shied away from people for too long because of what he was – because of who he had to be.

And so, hesitant, he reached out to the house before he approached just to reassure himself, just to feel the soft, petal-pink blush of her presence and draw forth courage to step into the light for the first time in centuries.

But there was someone else there; a cluttered thing of madness and grief and need, tangled up like a rat king. A mind he knew too well, blazing out in murderous determination.

His soulmate.

X - X - X - X - X

Marina froze. A chill swept her body, ringing in her ears. "What?"

"It's all so clear now," Sally continued, and her eyes were bright and sharp and focused. It was a predator's stare, the same merciless look she had seen in Nate's eyes earlier, and suddenly Marina couldn't think at all for panic. "None of them loved me, so how could they make me human? All I consumed was false love and desire."

Consumed? She'd eaten them? Gazing into Sally's pale, intense face, Marina believed it.

"But you..." Sally crooned, "You do love me, don't you, Rina?"

Her mind seemed gluey, the words grazing across her like nonsense. This wasn't real. This wasn't her heart thundering, her skin rippling with fear, her friend saying these preposterous things.

"That's the difference. I'll consume you and your love, and I'll be human. It'll save us both."

Both?

"You'll never be lonely again, Rina, you'll never be left out or abandoned or used. I'll keep you safe forever."

She found her voice at last. "By eating me?"

Sally looked at her as if it was a particularly stupid question. "Well, yes."

This couldn't be happening. People didn't make such wild, impossible claims and they certainly didn't announce them as if they were the most normal things in the world. People didn't eat other people.

And from nowhere, amidst the babble of thoughts that made no sense, Kav's voice cut through, level and leached of emotion. "Just like you've got serial killers, so have we."

People didn't eat other people. But monsters did.

"No," she breathed. The door was further away now – could she get there before Sally?

Sally's eyes chilled into a fey, inhuman green. Her voice had become a growl, thick and slurred. "That's not an option."

There was a series of grisly sounds; pop and cracks and tearing. And suddenly there was a massive, bristling beast on her bed, a thing that bore no resemblance at all to Sally Lupin except, perhaps, for the voracious stare that registered her only as prey.

She did the only thing she could think of; she drew breath to scream-

And it sprang.

It hit her hard, knocking the wind from her; there were claws and teeth and streaking hot pain beneath its frenzied weight. Her head was cracking on the leg of the desk; stupid thing to notice, her arms were bleeding but she still tried to keep its jaws from her face and throat, making only a faint keening sound that would not be enough to bring help.

Then she felt an immense, raw agony in her stomach and knew that it didn't matter now if anyone heard. Time became meaningless, lost beneath the pain that overwhelmed everything else, that turned her into gasps and gristle and not much else. She forgot her parents were downstairs. She forgot that the thing snuffling above her had ever been Sally.

And strange, before she looped into unconsciousness, she thought she heard a sound like breaking glass. Maybe it was just her heart.

The last she knew was pain and a sense of immense injustice, and arching over her last waking moments, utter hopelessness.

X - X - X - X - X

It had been a long time since he had moved so fast, but his body remembered; his muscles moved like silk and steel, just as he needed. He was at the house in an instant, and he leapt with the smooth ease of a cat, up to the window which was all that stood between him and them.

Him and her.

He barely felt the impact or the slivers of glass that left blood streaming down his forearms like ribbons. A moment's pain, that was all, then he was healed and grabbing hold of the thick fur, dragging her back-

It was like lightning in his veins, her presence, and even death and a couple of centuries could not diminish the poisonous tinge of her insanity.

He gritted his teeth against the invasion, as if a thunderstorm had crawled under his skin to try and split him with lightning. It wasn't a new sensation; he'd done this before.

After all, this game had gone on for countless lives, with only one difference.

This time, he had lived on.

Before, their deaths had occurred in bitter synchronicity. Time turned like a serpent, and they were reborn, alone and star-crossed, until some brief and fatal interchange. Each life, she was as shattered and wild and dazzling as she had ever been, clawing a bloody swathe through the world. A life here, one there, plucked and rendered into tattered pieces by her endless search for humanity.

And inevitably, she would find him; sometimes he had come across her hunched over a body, digging through its cavities in her desperation to find one piece of love made flesh. Sometimes he was seduced by her long before he knew anything of her barren heart; a flirtation at a gathering when his eyes were drawn by the glint of her silver necklace, a peasant girl who worked in the fields and sang strange lullabies yet wore jewellery that belonged to a lord, a courtesan twirling a gleaming chain around her fingers in coy invitation.

The constants in his life: him, and her pale, wintry beauty and the bright shackles of her silver necklace, drawing his eye and beginning the sequence.

So he was left with the choice. He could let her live and others die, or let her die, and him with her, dragged down by the swansong of her jealous soul. No, she would not leave him without her.

The story had been retold a thousand ways, each stitched into the past until their mismatched romance formed some bright and awful tapestry. He had taken every option, and always it ended the same; if he was not willing to be the executioner, her lust would turn to him, convinced the answer lay in his body. And if he died as he had so often, for she was the stronger of them and he the saner...well, she lived on until someone else came to stop her.

Such was his existence. The only mercy of it had been that each time he was born innocent, oblivious to the choice that waited for him. So it had been that he snatched happiness from his brief lives, not knowing his purpose as judge and executioner.

No longer. For the first time, she had erred and erred twice: she had killed someone he loved and she had made him a vampire, giving him the will to survive her demise.

Survival - a bittersweet gift. With it had come the tidal wave of memories, staggering him as he stood outside the burning church a hundred years ago. For a long time after that, he had wandered like a hermit, coming to terms with it all. And waiting for her, searching out the wicked gleam of silver.

And even knowing the future, he had been too late – he'd wanted it to be a clean fight for once, just him and his soulmate. Yet here they were, opposed over another ruined carcass.

But it wasn't over yet, no matter what his soulmate might think.

Not while he could still hear the distant whisper of Marina's mind like the sound of the ocean snared in a conch shell, not while he still hoped.

It was not the wolf in his hands anymore, but a girl; Sally Lupin, Marina had called her, but he could have given her countless other names; Adelaide, Sarah, Harriet, all worn under this one face.

Her eyes were wide and bright as a harvest sky. "I know you," she breathed, her mouth rimmed with blood. Her presence danced about him, her thoughts full of bloodlust and desire and famine. She was still powerful, despite her youth, and he fought the urge to run, to run and keep running, knowing what had to happen.

You'd think it would be easy after all these times. You'd think I could be brave about it.

The stink of blood rose from her, ferrous and thick. He wanted to gag, but that would hardly evoke the air of wistful romance he was after.

Her eyes narrowed. "What are you hiding?"

Suddenly she was in his mind, rummaging through his thoughts with ease; but practice had made him nimble as she, and quickly as she moved, he blocked the parts he didn't want her to see, leaving her only glimpses of the soulmate link, of times when he had been fooled by her and their relationship had seemed one of bliss. He made himself bait, radiating the humanity she sought so avariciously.

She was softening, opening like a flower – and with it came her hunger.

Careful now. If you're too slow, she will win. And if you're too quick, she will realise, and I think the fight will still go her way. Mad, yes, deluded, definitely – but strong and clever, and full of mistrust too.

"Is it true?" she demanded. It was the expression of old, aware of her own beauty and of the emotions she engendered. He had let her see that too; when she was Adelaide within the sanctuary of the church, seeming a saviour as she spoke to him of tenderness and salvation. "Are you really my soulmate?"

"You know it's true," he answered.

Her hands gripped his face, fingers touching the ridges of the scars and he had to fight not to cringe. Those critical eyes saw every mark and every flaw, judging, suspicious.

"You're still hiding something," she murmured, and her nails dug into his skin, tiny stinging crescents. "Why?"

He fumbled for a response, hands digging in his pocket to stop himself from flinging her away. And there it was between his fingers: the answer. "I wanted it to be a surprise," he said, his voice just a little panicky. But that was okay, she'd take the panic for fear of losing her.

Her lips pursed, the drying blood starting to crack. "What?"

Slowly he drew out the necklace. It glimmered, and this lifetime, it was her eyes that were drawn to it, she who was caught. "This."

"You found it!"

"I knew it was yours the moment I saw it." He made his smile genuine. You learned that, out on the road. Affability could be useful currency. "And it's brought us together again."

"So it has," she purred, and swept back her hair. He almost shuddered with relief as her toxic touch vanished.

He'd have to lean in to put it on; his hands would be occupied and his neck would be exposed. Raith saw how this one was going to go. She was a predator in every sense of the word.

And then he thought: why the necklace? Why is it with us? Have I been missing something – is there more to it than I've realised?

It was always there. And at the last, when she killed him, she wore it. Not for other murders – just him. And however he kicked and fought and flailed, generally futilely, it was the last thing he saw, dangling in his eyes as she loomed over him.

Trying to hide the revelation, he undid the clasp and reached around the back of her neck. Unseen, he switched the ends from hand to hand.

Her eyes flared – they were wolf eyes, and her jaws opened, revealing long rows of caked teeth-

Raith pulled the necklace tight, and shock bulged in her face.

And then he tried not to think about it, tried to stand there oblivious to the claws that raked across his chest, and even when she knocked them both to their knees, he hung on with the tenacity of a terrier. Blood streamed into his eyes, down his sides, but the cuts healed as fast as she could deal them. The only sound was his breath and the frantic twists of her body.

The necklace didn't break. He had known it wouldn't, and he wondered how many other lives he might have saved if he'd been quicker.

She was in his mind the whole time, her emotions exploding with the fury of fireworks, blistering in her rage and her denial and her horror. Pictures flickered past him, fast as a carousel – other faces, caught in anguish and fear, bodies that were bloodied, limp, pathetic. Hardest of all, Marina collapsing under her, her eyes wide and disbelieving.

That was the last thing she thought of, and with it, her mind became a swirling black nexus, trying to haul him in with her. Part of him wanted to be drawn down with her – to end this complex, difficult life and to be reborn into forgetfulness and naivety once again.

They tussled there in the space between them, her mind full of spite, grasping him, trying to make sure he followed her into death.

But he clung on, hearing himself in startled awe and Marina echoing in his memory over and over: Next time? I'd like there to be one. Next time...

Next time next time nextimenextime...counting down the seconds in terms of next times, hundreds of them, ripe possibilities and hope that made him fight his soulmate as finally she released him to go howling into death.

At last she was still. And he was alive. Shaking, he let go of the chain, let her slump to the floor.

Half-numb, he crawled over to Marina. God, she was so badly hurt...no human could survive this. He needed help, and he could think of only one place where he might find it right now.

Gathering what was left of his strength, he reached across the village to Farbrook and to the only minds he thought he'd be able to pick out there: Kaffir and Vanya.

X - X - X - X - X

People were dragging them apart, still spitting epithets when the call broke over them both.

_Please...help..._

_Who the hell are you? _Kav snarled. He didn't know the mind; it was wavering and pallid, and then a rush of images came at him and he reeled.

Marina covered in blood and so mangled that he could barely understand that was her body, a wolf hunkered over her, a bitter fight, the wolf becoming Sally, a silver necklace, hands grappling, ghastly images of Sally hunting someone – no several someones, all mashed together as if the owner of the mind could no longer separate them, Marina again, Sally limp on the floor, a dark ring around her throat, Marina, Marina, Marina-

_Stop! Stop it, stop it, stop it!_

The voice sounded half-dead. _Sorry. I'm so sorry._

And suddenly Kav realised he was screaming aloud, and Neo was there, crouched in front of him, gazing into his eyes. "Kaffir, you're broadcasting everything. Calm down."

He blinked. There was a crowd around him. He could hear people crying. Someone else was throwing up, and he understood why. "Marina...Sally..." Kav wanted to cry. Something horrible had happened, and he didn't know what to do.

"I know. Do you want me to help you?"

He nodded, unspeakably grateful, and then he felt Neo instilling calm into him, soothing away the nausea and the panic. It was only temporary, but he felt able to breathe again.

"Who are you speaking to?"

_Who are you?_

_Raith,_ came back the answer._ Please...Marina needs help. She won't survive. I don't know what to do._

Kav felt the panic start to rise up again, but Neo was there, joining the conversation, taking the burden.

_Where are you, Raith? We'll send help. In the meantime, use your blood. It won't heal her completely, but it's a start._

When the image of Marina's house wobbled into focus, Kav started. "What's happened?" he said, unaware of how young he sounded as he turned to Neo. "It'll be okay, won't it?"

He wanted reassurance. But Neo only stared at him with eyes that seemed older and sadder than they had before, and said, "We'll find out."

X - X - X - X - X

Marina lived in mist for a long time. Sometimes sensations pierced it; she heard Kav's voice, talking with a kind of yearning about school and the Nightworld, which both seemed odd topics for conversation. More often there was a warm fire that came to chase away the cold and the damp. It always smelled of cut grass and growing things, and each time it seemed to linger for longer.

Early on, she recalled a pair of fierce green eyes and wondered why she felt such joy at seeing them. A voice accompanied them, low and warm, begging her to stay – though why, she didn't know, because she hadn't gone anywhere. She only stayed in the mist, shrouded and puzzled.

In odd moments, she thought she saw fur bristling in the tendrils of mist, and she'd feel uncanny fear. But when she turned, it was just an illusion, and she would forget it, and drift on.

It was a phantasmagoric existence, but one in which she found peace. Her only worry was why she was here, and it never bothered her much. There was some purpose to it, she felt, some process taking place that could not happen elsewhere.

Most often she thought of the green eyes, and of a hand in hers which although it was ridged and smooth in strange places, brought a sense of comfort and amazement with it.

Some days, sunlight would shoot through the mist, stippling the ground in gold. At other times, she smelled flowers, and her mother's perfume. Once she dreamed her father was telling her about the Six Nations scores, and another time, he grumbled about politics until her mother stepped in and told him that if that was all he had to say, it was no wonder Marina was comatose. And then she heard her mother sobbing, and footsteps clattering from the room.

Comatose? Could that really be true?

Piece by piece, memories came back to her like swallows returning after winter. She began to understand what had happened to her, though at first she found the recollections hard to bear – and afterwards, she would always see wolves in the corner of her vision which faded as she grew used to the truth of exactly who – and what – Sally Lupin had been. At last she could put a name to the green eyes and the amazement that came with them: Raith.

And when she knew what had happened, and she understood what she might awake to, she found the mist began to clear in front of her, leaving a path.

It was time to go.

X - X - X - X - X

She woke up alone. The room was unfamiliar, but filled with her possessions, and flowers bloomed on the window sills. Someone had drawn strange symbols all over the walls.

Cautiously, Marina slid her legs out of the bed. She was wearing her own pyjamas, which was odd. Clearly this wasn't a hospital.

She padded over the mirror that hung on the wall, half-afraid of what she would see. But it was her own face peering back, if a little pale, her brown hair that hung around her face as if it was in need of a good wash. No marks; nothing hurt either. She felt weak, but...but compared to how Sally had left her, that was a miracle.

She found a shower attached to the room, and her clothes in the small wardrobe. Dazed, she made use of both, and when she was dressed, she felt more like herself.

Marina hesitated before she left the room. Part of her was childishly afraid that Sally would be outside, waiting to finish what she had begun. Part of her was afraid this was all another part of the dream.

The door opened onto an elaborate hallway which led to some equally elaborate stairs. She had a giddy urge to slide down the banister, but instead, wobbling slightly, she walked down into the small anteroom. Someone had thoughtfully put up signs over the two doors leading out. One went to the main building; the other to the offices, whatever they were.

Main building, she decided, and when she went out, she glanced back to see a sign on the back of the door that told her she had been in the guest accommodation. Well, that made sense, she supposed.

Another long hall that she walked down slowly – and then she heard noise, the rumble of a lot of people. When she pushed open the door, she found herself in the dining room Kav had brought her to last time she'd come to Farbrook.

At first the few faces that saw her showed no recognition. Then a woman dropped her spoon and squeaked. "You're that human girl I've been healing!"

A man next to her glanced up too, and his eyes were amused. He had the sleepy air of subdued danger that Sally had had right – before, and Marina found herself flinching back. But when he spoke, his voice was kind, if a little mocking. "Looks like you did a good job, then. Enjoy your beauty sleep, girl? You caused a right ruckus, you know."

She didn't know what to say. "I didn't mean to."

"Well, I can see why you're friends with Kaffir. That's his excuse too." He bellowed in a voice that crashed over all the chatter of the dining room, "Kaffir Lybica! Come and look after your houseguest!"

And then there was Kav, twining between the tables, a look of familiar annoyance on his face. "What are you yelling about? I haven't got any bloody guests-"

He saw her, and not for the first time, she glimpsed him off-guard, astonished – but this time, there was no fear in his face, only awe. "Rina?" he said, as if unsure it was her. Then he gave a wild yell. "Rina! Rina, you're okay!"

She found herself swept up in a gigantic hug – the first she'd ever had from Kav, which was something of a miracle in itself – and then he dropped her and said, "Oh god, how girly was that?"

She looked up at him and despite herself, couldn't help giggling. "Very."

He sighed. "There goes my street cred. And I suppose you want breakfast."

"Breakfast," she agreed, and some of her exuberance drained away. She could put it off – but she didn't want to. "And an explanation."

When she saw his sombre face, she knew it wasn't going to be pleasant.

X - X - X - X - X

The explanation was long and complicated, and took several hours. It was interrupted frequently, and each time she was glad of the diversion – her parents bursting in to shower her with hugs, and in her father's case, a running commentary on the state of British rugby. There seemed new fragility in them both as they spoke uneasily of the Nightworld, and gazed about Farbrook with frightened eyes.

Sally was dead. Marina shocked herself by bursting into tears – she shouldn't care, surely, not after the attack. But part of her could only think of the piteous way that Sally said, "They don't love me like you do." Part of her could only think of her friend with whom she'd shared so much, some good, some bad, all them.

No one would tell her how she had died; only that it had happened, and that she was safe. That alone gave her a good idea of just what had occurred.

Her parents sat beside her as Neo explained about the bones they had found in the woods and she echoed back what Sally had told her about Terry - poor Terry, too human to live. She listened numbly as Neo spoke about soulmates and past lives, but when she pressed him for detail about Sally and Raith, he only shook his head and said she would need to speak to Raith about that. And that, she thought, was the why of what happened.

It was only after Marina gave her own version of events that she learned Raith had been held as a prisoner in Farbrook.

"We had no choice," Neo said quietly when he saw her flare of anger. "We had only his word that Sally attacked you. Even for us, it was a hard story to believe. Soulmates...well, it has been a while since I heard that old myth, and if it weren't for some interesting tales that have reached me from across the pond, I don't think I would have believed it at all."

"Are you sure you didn't want him to be the villain?" she said, her voice low and dangerous. They were alone; her parents had left for work.

Neo met her eyes squarely. "Want? No, though others did. But I had my reasons for believing he might be dangerous."

Raith was with me, she thought. Even in the mist and the fever he was with me, begging me to stay. She didn't realise how stern her face was, but she recognised the grain of respect in Neo's eyes. "You're all dangerous," she said. "Every last one of you. But he was the only one who made me feel safe."

"Speak to Raith before you judge us too harshly." As she left, he called, "Marina?"

She turned. His smile was compassionate. "Try not to judge him too harshly, either," he advised.

X - X - X - X - X

It took her a week to accept the new shape of her life; she knew it might take years or longer to adjust to it.

She wanted to speak to Raith, wanted to so much that it burned in the back of her mind like an ever-present fire, but he was avoiding her. Despite the fact that he was now just a few doors up from her, ensconced in the guest rooms (after being moved from what Kav termed 'secure accommodation' and she called 'prisons'), she had seen nothing of him. Was he afraid of her, or simply avoiding her after the way she'd spoken to him?

She didn't know, and she was too unsure to force a confrontation, so she only tried to adapt to her life. A week of digesting the facts, and putting together what she thought to be true. A week of conversations as she tried to siphon information from Farbrook without anyone realising.

"Do you think you'll find your soulmate?" she said to the witch who came in every day to check her progress.

The woman snorted. "I don't think my husband would be too pleased if I did."

"But aren't they the love of your life?" she persisted, acting the naïve human.

"Your soulmate's someone who is bound to you, for better or worse. Who's to say it wouldn't be worse, eh? You read the stories, you'll soon see that. There's a whole book about soulmates who couldn't stand each other, and most of them came to a sticky end. Besides, my husband's the love of my life," the woman said gruffly, handing her a cup. "But don't you tell him that. He's too big for his boots as it is. Now drink this, and don't pull that face."

X - X - X - X - X

"I don't know how she hid it," Kav said softly as they sat watching a film. "She was so emotional."

Marina glanced over. The subject made her uncomfortable as it did him, but she wanted to talk about it. She needed to. "Sally told me...she told me that she all of you played at being human. She said some of you believed it after a while."

He froze. And when he spoke, his voice wasn't quite calm enough for her to miss the strain in it. "Do you believe that?"

She tried to hide her fear. It would always be there now, she thought, like a ghost of Sally returning to inject doubt into her friendship with Kav. "I know we're friends," she said cautiously. "And I know you'd only lie to me about things that don't matter."

He glared at her. "You matter," he snapped, "so don't play word games with me. I dealt with all that shit when I was a kid, and I got sick of it. I've never had a human friend before, okay, and I didn't realise how...how breakable you are. When I realised what happened..."

He trailed off, mouth taut.

"What?" she prodded, curious.

His eyes were angry, and she thought he wouldn't answer. Then he muttered, "You scared me. I'd miss you, you know."

She knew what an admission it was. "Kav," she said, stammering a little. "You're about as human as you can get, even though you're not."

There was a pause and the atmosphere lightened. "You talk such crap," he said, but she saw his smile.

X - X - X - X - X

Neo was a harder nut to crack, and she suspected he knew why she was probing.

"I wonder what it must be like having past lives," she'd said mildly.

His smile was crooked. "Most people don't remember them."

"But still," she persisted. "If you did..."

He watched her as if deciding something. She had no idea what conclusion he came to, but when he spoke, she listened. Everyone in Farbrook treated Neo with reverence, and she'd be an idiot not to notice that.

"From what I hear, most past lives are similar to this one. You always follow certain paths, make certain choices, meet certain people. Some arise from your nature; others seem...pre-destined, or at least occur too often to be mere coincidence. Luck, perhaps we should call it. However hard you try, you cannot escape these certainties – only choose differently. But you can't live by past lives. You have to seize happiness in this one, or it might pass you by completely."

"Do you have anyone you'd like to meet again?" she asked, not sure why.

For some reason, the question made him smile. "Plenty of people. Whether they'd like to meet me again is another matter."

X - X - X - X - X

She might have put off seeing Raith forever, but then Kav told her he was leaving the next day. So she took the decision to see him before he was gone; before he would be nothing but a wistful memory.

Thus she found herself outside his door, just a few up from her own.

Marina hadn't expected to feel so nervous. She didn't know what she'd come here to say, only that she wanted to see him, to know if he could still arouse the same intense feelings in her.

She lifted a hand to knock, and then thought better of it. He might tell her to go away. He might not answer at all. Why else was he avoiding her? He didn't want to see her, that was obvious; exactly why was not.

So instead she thrust open the door and strode in as if there wasn't a battalion of butterflies in her stomach and fluttering along her skin.

He was reading, but when Raith saw her, he dropped the book and flinched back; the reaction was almost violent, the way he hid the ruined side of his face from her. How wary he was, poised there as if waiting for an excuse to flee. A small suitcase was already packed, the room swept clean except for him.

"Why are you hiding from me?" she demanded, stung to the quick. He'd treated her as if she was one of those idiots, staring at him, making cruel remarks. "Haven't you figured out that I don't care what you look like?"

Surprise in his eyes, and when he turned to face her, so slow, as if she would change her mind, they still held a rawness and a power that bewitched her. All those conflicting feelings came back; she wanted to protect him from all the savagery of the world, yet knew with iron certainty that he could shelter her from the Nightworld and its brutality.

"I thought you might have changed your mind," he mumbled.

She half-smiled. No. Not likely, not when her dreams were saturated with him, when she was so often disturbed by thoughts of him. "You're not one of the monsters. Not to me."

His expression went blank, and he was very still. "I killed Sally."

"I know," she said, though hearing it aloud made the reality of it all congeal inside her mind.

His shock wiped away any pretence of serenity. "What?"

Marina eyed him. "It wasn't hard to work out." She clasped her hands together so they'd stop trembling. "I don't know whether to thank you or not."

"Neither do I."

"Neo said...he said she was your soulmate."

"Yes." His smile was tired. "I came looking for her. I thought I could find her before the killings began this time, but it took me years to find her. And all the while, she was going what she does every time – killing them, trying to find love or peace or humanity or whatever the hell it is she's looking for."

"It happens every time?"

"Yes. Last time..." He closed his eyes, as if it was easier to speak about it when he didn't have to watch her reactions. "She was the vampire who made me. She killed my girl, but I thought that was just...because she wasn't human. I thought she didn't really understand how easily we died. She was so much stronger than me, so good at hiding her thoughts. It was only later I realised my girl was just one of a crowd. And then, of course, she turned on me. We fought – and she knocked over the candles. She caught fire – I've never seen anyone burn like that, as if her blood was petrol. And when she died...I remembered everything. Every life when she'd killed me, every life when I'd killed her and she'd taken me with her, every body I'd found, all the people I'd loved that she'd killed..."

He trailed off and she only stood there, unable to find any words that could ease the enormity of his grief.

"It doesn't excuse any of it," he said softly. "It doesn't make it right, what I do. It just makes it necessary."

"Do you love her?" She hadn't meant to blurt that out.

"No. I thought I did, once, but all I ever loved was a pretence." He spread his hands. "She was a good actress. She fooled me every time."

"She fooled me too," she said bitterly. "How did I miss it?"

And then the grief came, a great grey wave that curled over her. She wanted to hold her composure, to be cool and confident under his eyes, but suddenly the words were pouring out from her, unstoppable.

"I loved her," she flung at him, her anger tangible, bitter - but not directed at him. "I loved her and she used me. I thought she was my friend, but she took all my secrets and my flaws and she turned them against me. She made them reasons for me to die."

It might have been easier if she could muster tears, but she could only speak with this hollow, husky voice and know the truth of just what Sally had been. She couldn't drown it with salt water or scream loud enough to silence it – she would just have to bear it, the fear and the sorrow and the fury.

But it would be so much easier to bear with him. That, she realised, was why she was here. To beg him to stay as he had begged her when she lay on the threshold between life and death.

"She left you scars too, didn't she?" he said. There was no pity there, just the plain speaking of one survivor to another. It calmed her, knowing he wasn't going to throw homilies at her. "They just aren't as visible."

She nodded, gathering up her pride. "She wanted me to die," Marina said flatly, tasting the words with rancour. "But you..." It was a tremendous thing to say to him – a huge, frightening thing to confess. "You wanted me to live. I heard you calling."

His mouth was wide and startled, and she was delighted by the fact she could surprise him. "You heard?"

"I dreamed of you," she said, and when a flush crept up his face, she knew that he remembered his words alone to her: no one dreams of me these days.

I do. I dream of you. Surely that's enough?

"Stay," she pleaded.

He shook his head. "I can't. Marina, this will all happen again. This is what I do – I find her and I stop her and then I wait for the next time."

"And that's it?" she demanded. "That's all?"

"Either I kill her or I'm killed. Not much of a choice." His smile was bitter.

And she looked at him, looked at the hurt in those green eyes which had haunted her all through her feverish dreams and said, "Maybe it's what you do in between that matters."

She moved towards him then, step after step, her gaze unflinching and unafraid. He had tensed, and she knew from his quick breaths, from the stillness of his body that he was ready to run. And when she reached out and touched him, brushing her fingertips along the line of his jaw, over the scars, up into his hair, she felt him quiver, but he didn't draw back.

Marina sat down, sinking against his side. She was waiting for rejection, but he put a tentative arm about her, and for the first time she had awoken, she felt no fear at all. "Don't you want to know what might happen?" she asked, her heart hammering.

His eyes were vast and green and amazed as he looked down at her. He gazed at her as if she were something unaccountably beautiful, something to be cherished. No one had ever looked at her like that before.

"Yes," he answered.

"Then stay. Please."

It wouldn't be forever, she knew. After all, he had his duty to call him away some dark day, and she would grow older, and perhaps it wouldn't even last beyond a few weeks, but she wanted to know. And she thought of Neo's advice, for advice it had surely been: you can't live by past lives. You have to seize happiness in this one, or it might pass you by completely

And this boy, with his careful hands and his soft voice and his eyes the colour of luck and his scars – she wouldn't let him pass by. Not in this life; and this was the only one that mattered.

When he spoke, his voice was just a little rough. "Are you sure you want me?"

"Certain," she said, not knowing that the look in her eyes was a mirror of his; sweet, steady, and full of promise. She only knew that something had begun; something that might become fabulous or appalling, might be a mistake or a fool's paradise or a dream or anything at all.

But right now - something beautiful.

_And in the arms of a stranger  
You search for someone like her_

_And the music carries on  
In a simple border song  
You once knew_

**_ -- _Fin _--_**

Thank you for reading and again, sorry about the delay. I'd adore hearing what you thought._  
_


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